Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/127

 TIIK PKOIM.E AND GOVKRNMKNT. i-o; The ferocity they preserved amid all the luxurious appliances of their civilization is commemorated. Atrocities of every kind find a place in the reliefs. Among the prisoners of war the most fortunate are those led by a cord passed through their lips. Others are mutilated, crucified, flayed alive. Tiglath Pileser II. is shown to us besieging a city, before whose walls he has impaled three prisoners taken from the defenders (see Fig 26). Else- where we find scribes counting over heaps of heads before paying the price for them. 1 When these had come from the shoulders of FIG. 27. Feast of Assurbanipal ; from Konyuncljik. British Museum. IIe : ght 20^ inche?. No. I, The servants of the fea^t. important enemies they were carried in procession and treasured as honourable trophies. I none relief we find Assurbanipal, after his return to Nineveh from the subjugation of the southern rebels, lying upon a luxurious couch in the garden of his harem and sharing a sumptuous meal with a favoured wife. Birds are singing 1 LAYARD, A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh (folio, 1853), plates 26 and 27. The scribes in question seem to be writing upon rolls of leather.