There is no delineation or suggestion of the Rod, or of Angling on any sculpture or any seal, Sumerian, Babylonian, or Assyrian.[889] The omission does not preclude the existence or use of the Rod. If it did exist, and were used, we are surprised that there should not survive amongst the thousands of things mentioned and the many pursuits represented a single indication of it. Our wonder, indeed, grows stronger when we call to mind that the Assyrians: (_a_) Were a people much given to sport of all kinds: (_b_) Were keenly addicted to the eating of fish, which was not, as in Israel or Egypt, half-banned by a prophet, or whole-barred to a priesthood by custom, totemistic or other: (_c_) Did attach very real importance to the maintenance of an ample supply of fish. Their dams and _vivaria_, the adjuncts of every important temple or every self-respecting township, and their enforcement of Fish Regulations, attest the economic value: (_d_) Do mention and do represent other kinds of fishing, _e.g._ with the hand-line and the net. The latter, for both fowling and fishing, often finds place in their, and Israelitish, metaphors. Examples occur in the story of the defeat of Marduk and Tiāmat, “They (the enemies) were cast into the net,” and in the prayer of Eannatum to the god Enki that, if the citizens of Umma in future break the recent treaty, he will destroy them in his net. But in the legend of the taking of Zu, the stealer of the destiny-tablets, the net of the Sun-god is certainly a fowling one: (_e_) Did possess near at hand, and had not to import (as the Romans from Africa) ample material for the Rod in reeds, which were abundant near Babylon and were utilised in the construction of furniture, light boats, and fences. In the lists of private property these reeds—employed for household not angling purposes—figure not infrequently: (_f_) Were for hundreds of years closely associated in intercourse and trade with the Egyptians, whose use of the Rod can be carried back to about the XIIth Dynasty, _c._ 2000, or, according to Petrie’s chronology, _c._ 3500 B.C. Before discussing the date of the first contact or connection between the two countries, it is advisable shortly to distinguish between the three peoples whom I group under the term Assyrians, and roughly apportion the periods of the four thousand odd years of Assyrian history during which each was predominant. The first, the Sumerians, occupied before—perhaps long before—the close of the fourth millennium the land on the lower plain of the Tigris and Euphrates and on the sea coast, as it then was.[890] They possessed an advanced civilisation, with an organised government, many large cities, and considerable agricultural and industrial development.