There was nothing very remarkable in the dress or quality of the royal attendants. Except the groom, the charioteer, and the shield-bearers, they were in the early times almost invariably eunuchs; but the later kings seem to have preferred eunuchs for the offices of parasol-bearer and fan-bearer only. The dress of the eunuchs is most commonly a long fringed gown, reaching from the neck to the feet, with very short sleeves, and a broad belt or girdle confining the gown at the waist. Sometimes they have a cross-belt also; and occasionally both this and the girdle round the waist are richly fringed. The eunuchs commonly wear earrings, and sometimes armlets and bracelets; in a few instances they have their necks adorned with necklaces, and their long dresses elaborately patterned. Their heads are either bare, or at most encircled with a fillet. [Illustration: PLATE 115] A peculiar physiognomy is assigned to this class of persons--the forehead low, the nose small and rounded, the lips full, the chin large and double, the cheeks bloated. [PLATE CXV., Fig. 2.] They are generally represented as shorter and stouter than the other Assyrians. Though placed in confidential situations about the person of the monarch, they seem not to have held very high or important offices. The royal Vizier is never a eunuch, and eunuchs are rarely seen among the soldiers; they are scribes, cooks, musicians, perhaps priests; as they are grooms-in-waiting, huntsmen, parasol-bearers, and fan-bearers; but it cannot be said with truth that they had the same power in Assyria which they have commonly possessed in the more degraded of the Oriental monarchies. It is perhaps a sound interpretation of the name Rabsaris in Scripture to understand it as titular, not appellative, and to translate it “the Chief Eunuch” or “the Master of the Eunuchs;” and if so, we have an instance of the employment by one Assyrian king of a person of this class on an embassy to a petty sovereign: but the sculptures are far from bearing out the notion that eunuchs held the same high position in the Assyrian court as they have since held generally in the East, where they have not only continually filled the highest offices of state, but have even attained to sovereign power. On the contrary, their special charge seems rather to have been the menial offices about the person of the monarch, which imply confidence in the fidelity of those to whom they are entrusted, but not submission to their influence in the conduct of state affairs. And it is worthy of notice that, instead of becoming more influential as time went on, they appear to have become less so; in the later sculptures the royal attendants are far less generally eunuchs than in the earlier ones; and the difference is most marked in the more important offices. [Illustration: PLATE 116]