Examples, however, occur where the conventional formulæ of Egyptian sculpture have been abandoned, and the artist has overcome the difficulties of perspective; as in a remarkable scene in the Memmonium, at Thebes, where Atmoo, Thoth, and a female (styled by Wilkinson the Goddess of Letters) are all engaged in writing the name of Rameses on the fruit of the Persea tree. Though looking in opposite directions, each holds the pen in the right hand (Wilkinson, Pl. 54 A). So also at Beni Hassan, two artists kneeling in front of a board, face each other, and each paints an animal, holding the brush in the right hand. At Medinet Habou, Thebes, more than one scene of draught-players occurs, where the players, facing each other, each hold the piece in the right hand. Similar illustrations repeatedly occur. Among another people, of kindred artistic skill, whose records have been brought anew to light in recent years, their monumental evidence appears to furnish more definite results; while the curiously definite reference in the Book of Jonah leaves no room to doubt that among the ancient Ninevites it was recognised that at the earliest stage when voluntary action co-operated with the rational will, a specific hand was habitually in use. That the ancient dwellers on the Euphrates and the Tigris were a right-handed people appears to be borne out by their elaborate sculpture, recovered at Kourjunjik, Khorsabad, Nimroud, and other buried cities of the great plain. The sculptures are in relief, and frequently of a less conventional character than those of the Egyptian monuments, and are consequently less affected by the aspect and position of the figures. The gigantic figure of the Assyrian Hercules--or, as supposed, of the mighty hunter Nimrod,--found between the winged bulls, in the great court of the Palace of Khorsabad, is represented strangling a young lion, which he presses against his chest with his left arm, while he holds in his right hand a weapon of the chase, supposed to be analogous to the Australian boomerang. On the walls of the same palace the great king appears with his staff in his right hand, while his left hand rests on the pommel of his sword. Behind him a eunuch holds in his right hand, over the king’s head, a fan or fly-flapper; and so with other officers in attendance. Soldiers bear their swords and axes in the right hand, and their shields on the left arm. A prisoner is being flayed alive by an operator who holds the knife in the right hand. The king himself puts out the eyes of another captive, holding the spear in his right hand, while he retains in his left the end of a cord attached to his victim. Similar evidence abounds throughout the elaborate series of sculptures in the British Museum and in the Louvre. Everywhere gods and men are represented as “discerning between their right hand and their left,” and giving the preference to the former.