There are solitary instances of the _Fox_, the _Frog_ and the _Bear_, but none of the foregoing play what may be called an important part in the history of the country’s art. The _Lion_ and the _Serpent_ occupy a prominent position in artistic representations, and were undoubtedly familiar and formidable entities in real life, while the majesty of the former and the subtlety of the latter were alone sufficient to obtain for them a place in the mythological and heraldic symbolism of the dwellers of Mesopotamia. The lion was known everywhere, in highlands and lowlands alike, while he still haunts the low marsh country of Babylonia. On the cylinder-seals he generally appears engaged in deadly combat with Gilgamesh, the hero of Babylonian folk-lore, or his friend Ea-bani who of course on all occasions worsts him; he is figured in clay and stone from the earliest (cf. Fig. 26, B) to the latest times, he is embroidered on garments, and decorates scabbards, while he plays an all-important part in the heraldic device of the ancient city of Lagash, which is composed of an eagle with outspread wings, clutching two lions facing in opposite directions (cf. Fig. 27), doubtless emblematic of the dominion exercised by the king of Lagash over the peoples of the East and West respectively. He enjoys the doubtful honour of being the peculiar object of the Assyrian King’s attention in later days, and afforded him the sport which he loved above all others (cf. Pl. XIX); individual kings slew great numbers, and Tukulti-Ninib I (1275 B.C.), to take a single example, places it on record that he slew some 920 lions, just as Amenḥetep III king of Egypt similarly boasts that he killed 102 lions in the first ten years of his reign. Originally no doubt lions were sufficiently plentiful, but as their numbers were thinned, it became necessary to capture and preserve them in cages till they were required for the royal hunt (cf. Pl. XXVII). The lion is sometimes reproduced in colossal size, and endowed with wings and the head of a man, in which capacity, stationed at the portals of the King’s palace, his vocation is to ward off the advances of malevolent and maleficent demons, while at other times, he is less fully equipped, and is provided only with a head, bust and hands of a man. Always a creature of weight in more ways than one, his body is not unfittingly adapted to the requirements of the scales; a considerable number of bronze lion-weights have come down to us, the workmanship of which was probably Phœnician (as was also the ivory work of the Assyrian empire), while the weight represented by each lion was inscribed in Phœnician characters. Sometimes again the hollow bronze head of a lion formed the ornate fitting of the end of a chariot-pole. As a general rule, the lion emblematized the King’s enemies, hence it is that, whenever he is seen engaged in conflict, he is always overpowered either by sheer bodily