The table was ornamented with flowers, and musicians were hired to amuse the banqueters. No less than seven or eight different musical instruments were known, among them the harp, the lyre, and the tambourine. The lyre seems to have been specially employed at feasts, and the harp for the performance of sacred music. The instrumental music was at times accompanied by the voice, and bands of musicians celebrated the triumphant return of the king from war. Polygamy was permitted—at all events to the monarch—and the palace was accordingly guarded by a whole army of eunuchs. They were generally in attendance on the sovereign, like the scribes whose offices were continually needed in both peace and war. Another attendant must not be forgotten—the servant who stood behind the king armed with a fly-flap, and was almost a necessity in hot weather. Considering the number of captives carried away every year to Assyria in the successful campaigns of its rulers, slaves must have been very plentiful in Nineveh. Indeed, after the Arabian campaign of Assur-bani-pal we are told that a camel was sold for half a shekel of silver, and that a man was worth a correspondingly small sum. Next to hunting men the chief employment and delight of an Assyrian king was to hunt wild beasts. Tiglath-Pileser I had hunted elephants in the land of the Hittites, as the Egyptian Pharaohs had done before him; subsequently the extinction of the elephant in Western Asia caused his successors to content themselves with lesser game. The reem or wild bull and the lion became their favourite sport, smaller animals like the gazelle, the hare, and the wild ass being left to their subjects to pursue. It was not until the reign of Assur-bani-pal that the lion-hunt ceased to be a dangerous and exciting pastime. With Esar-haddon, however, the old race of warrior kings had come to an end, and the new king introduced a new style of sport. The lions were now caught and kept in cages, until they were turned out for a royal _battue_. As they had to be whipped into activity, neither the monarch nor his companions could have run much risk of being harmed.