Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/186

 I ^o A History of Art in Chald.ea and Assyria. The lion finds himself confronted by the Royal huntsman who rights, as a rule, from his chariot, where two or three com- panions, chosen from his bravest and most skilful servants, are ready to lend him help if necessary. The British Museum possesses a great number of sculptured pictures in which every incident of the hunt is figured up to its inevitable end. We reproduce two figures from the slabs representing the great hunt of Assurbanipal. The first shows a huge lion mortally wounded by an arrow which still stands in his body. It has transfixed some great vessel, and the blood gushes in a wide torrent from his Fig. 78. — Lion coming out of bis cage. Height of relief about 22 inches. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elm'e Gautier. open mouth. Already the chills of death are upon him and yet with his back arched, and his feet brought together and grasping the soil, he collects his energies in a last effort to prevent himself rolling over helplessly on the sand. Still more expressive, perhaps, and more pathetic, is the picture of a lioness struck down by the same hand, but in a different fashion (Fig. 80). One of three arrows that have reached her has transfixed the spinal column at the loins. All the hinder part of the body is paralysed. The hind feet drag helplessly on the ground, while the poor animal still manages for a moment to support