perseverance, and warlike skill of the Assyrian nation and its princes, even though they magnify their successes--so too the reverse side of these qualities is brought into prominence; the fierce cruelty, the bloody savagery which the conquered had to undergo. The kings constantly boast of the punishments they have inflicted, and appear more than once to exaggerate them. The rivalry of the long series of the rulers of Assyria in building temples and palaces, which begins with the oldest period of the realm, after the pattern of Babylonia, has preserved for us no inconsiderable remains of Assyrian arts, and ocular evidence of the industry and mode of life, of the character and manners of the Assyrians--not indeed in the breadth and unbroken succession of development in which the monuments and the inexhaustible sepulchres on the Nile have retained the picture of ancient Egypt. For monuments of plastic art, the ruins of Erech, and Ur, and of Babylon, have been investigated almost in vain. The ruins of Nineveh and Chalah have preserved a considerable series of works of sculpture. If in the ruins of Babylon, with the exception of outlines on seals or other cylinders, there is scarcely a single image of a god preserved, there have been discovered at Nineveh some statues of gods, and innumerable pictures in relief of gods and demons, on the slabs of the palaces. The most frequent object on these is the image of the god Asshur. On a bearded human head, of grave aspect, the god wears a round cap or a helmet, round which are horns; the figure extends only to the knees; it is surrounded by a winged disk to which, from the knees of the god downwards, are attached the tail-feathers of a bird. In battle-pictures the breast of the god is clothed with a cuirass of steel-plates; his bow is in his hand; he shoots his arrows against the enemies of his nation. On the pictures representing a victorious return, and the seal-cylinders of the kings, the bow rests in the hands of the god. Nebo, the god of the planet Mercury (I. 267), is exhibited in standing images, with long beard and bared breast; the robe descends from the breast. Of a statue of Istar, in her old temple at Nineveh, we have at the least the head.[412] The god Bin also is to be seen on cylinders; he holds the trident of his lightning in his hand, a pointed cap is on his head; his robe falls, not from the shoulders, but only from the hips down to his ancles. The moon god Sin is seen on Assyrian cylinders in a long robe, with a long beard, standing on a half-moon; a second half-moon rises above the tall covering of his head. In a figure swimming in water, with a round horned cap on the head, and ending in the body of a fish from the hips downwards, we may no doubt recognise Dagon. The cylinders most frequently exhibit a sun's disk by the side of the images of Asshur, the crescent and seven stars.[413] On the slabs of stone which exhibit to us the forms of the kings, symbolical indications