In these pictures birds hold a very secondary place; Assyrian sculpture was hardly light enough of hand to render their forms and feathers. For such a task, indeed, painting with its varied handling, its delicate lines and brilliant colours is required. It was with the brush that the Egyptians succeeded, in the frescoes of their tombs, in figuring the principal birds of the Nile Valley with all their elegance of form and brilliant variety of plumage. In Assyria, among a nation of soldiers and in an art whose chief inspiration had to do with war, the only bird we find often reproduced is the eagle, the symbol of victory, who floats over the chariot of the king, and the vulture who devoured where they fell the bodies of the enemies of Assyria; and even these images are rather careless and conventional, which may perhaps be accounted for by their partially symbolic character and their frequent repetition.[185] A group of partridges rising and, in those sculptures of the later Sargonids in which the artists show a love for picturesque detail, birds hopping in the trees or watching over their nestlings, have been mentioned as showing technical excellence of the same kind as the hunting scenes.[186] The ostrich appears on the elaborate decorations of the royal robes (Fig. 75) and upon the cylinders (Fig. 76). Perhaps it was considered sacred. [Illustration: FIG. 75.--Embroidery on the king’s robe; from Layard.] [Illustration: FIG. 76.--Fight between a man and an ostrich. Chalcedony. National Library, Paris.] As for fishes, crabs, and shells, these were scattered broadcast over the watercourses in the reliefs, but they are never studied with any great care (see Vol. I., Figs. 34 and 157), nor is any attempt made to distinguish their species. They seem to have been introduced merely as hints to the spectator, to dispel any doubt he may entertain as to the meaning of those sinuous lines by which the sculptor suggested rivers and the sea. Where these indications are not given we might indeed very easily mistake the artist’s intention (see Vol. I., Figs. 38 and 71).