Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/412

 574 A History of Art in Chald.£A and Assyria. Indus valley. The route must have been by Cabul, Herat, the gates of the Caspian and Media. 1 Several passes led down to the Tigris valley from the plateau of Iran. Longer and more difficult roads brought Armenia and the Caucasus into relations with Nineveh ; but, as Herodotus noticed, the rafts of inflated skins, or keleks as they are now called, could be used to float the stones and metals, the leather and the wool of the hilly regions down to the Assyrian capital and the cities of Chaldaea. Timber also would come down with the stream. Towards the west the roads that crossed the fords of the Euphrates, either at Thapsacus, or higher up, at Karkhemish, put Assyria into communication with Asia Minor by the défiles of the Taurus, and with Upper Syria and Damascus by the desert and the oasis of Tadmor. It was by this latter route that the great ports on the Syrian coast received those draperies and carpets which Ezekiel was so careful to enumerate when he pictured the commerce of Tyre. Addressing that queen of the sea whose fall made him leap for joy, he cries : " Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur and Chilmad were thy merchants. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar among thy merchandize." 1 The juxtaposition on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II. of the rhinoceros, the small-eared or Indian elephant, and the Bactrian camel seems to point to this route. The monkeys in the same reliefs appear to belong to an Indian species (Houghton, Mammalia of the Assyrian Sculptures ; pp. 3 j 9, 320).