At Harrān (according to al-Nadim), dogs were considered sacred and had offerings made unto them, a statement which is strengthened by the divine title at Harrān of _My Lord with the Dogs_, which seemingly points to Marduk and his four dogs, the name of one of which, _Iltebu_, “the Howler,” is as characteristic to-day as it was five thousand years ago. In the Bible it is curious to note the low position of the dog. It is rarely spoken of with approval. Possibly the existence and proclivities of the numerous packs of pariah dogs account for the fact. Tobit seems the only person who makes his dog his companion, and then only when on journeys.[950] Over two hundred kinds of fish are enumerated in the catalogue of Asurbanipal’s library at Nineveh: the attachment of the fish determinative constitutes our authority. No writer, even Dr. Boulenger, has classified or identified the fishes of Assyrian representations as thoroughly as Montet and others have those of the hieroglyphs. The task would seem more formidable, for two reasons: first, the short time that cuneiform as compared with hieroglyph writing has been deciphered, and the wider study which Egyptian excavation has attracted; and second, the Assyrian artist treated his subjects more generally and more conventionally than his _confrères_ in Egypt. Although in the sea and river scenes fish and shells are introduced, scarcely any distinctions mark particular ichthyic species. Contrast with this the representations of the return of Hatasu’s expedition from the land of Punt or Arabia. Here the artists depict the fishes so characteristically that Doenitz has identified them as belonging to the Red Sea, and even determined the species of each. We can recognise in the rivers, crabs, sometimes with a fish caught in their claws, eels (or water-snakes), and small turtles. When the sculptor wished to indicate the sea, he made these fish larger, and to emphasise his point added others, which are only inhabitants of salt water, _e.g._ the star-fish.[951] Within the last five years identification[952] of Mesopotamian fish has been carried further by Dr. Harri Holma of Helsingfors,[953] and by Professor Langdon.[954] From the latter I take the following list:— “1. The _buradu_, of the skate and ray type. This flat fish is the most common of all species in Southern Babylonia from the earliest historical period. The Sumerians knew it as the _suḥuru_ fish, and speak of it as ‘bearded,’ referring to a kind of skate fish with long hairs about the mouth. They mention also the ‘goat-skate,’ and the ‘lower lipped skate.’ Dr. Holma’s statement (p. 96) that the _suḥuru_ cannot be the skate, turbot, or plaice, because these have no beards, has been contraverted, since fish of the skate type often have long feelers at the mouth resembling a beard. “2. The _kuppû_, said to be the _rhombus maximus_.