from Phoenicia to Assyria, and made them build him ships there, which were then launched upon the Tigris, and conveyed down to the sea.  With a fleet thus constructed, and probably manned, by Phoenicians, Sennacherib crossed to the opposite coast, defeated the refugees, and embarking his prisoners on board, returned in triumph to the mainland.  Another expedition was that of Shalmaneser IV. against the island Tyre.  Assyrians are said to have been personally engaged in it; but here again we are told that they embarked in ships furnished to then by the Phoenicians, and maimed chiefly by Phoenician sailors.

When a country was regarded as subjugated, the Assyrian monarch commonly marked the establishment of his sovereignty by erecting a memorial in some conspicuous or important situation within the territory conquered, as an enduring sign of his having taken possession.  These memorials were either engraved on the natural rock or on solid blocks of stone cut into the form of a broad low stele.  They contained a figure of the king, usually enclosed in an arched frame; and an inscription, of greater or less length, setting forth his name, his titles, and some of his exploits.  More than thirty such memorials are mentioned in the extant Inscriptions, and the researches of recent times have recovered some ten or twelve of them.  They uniformly represent the king in his sacerdotal robes, with the sacred collar round his neck, and the emblems of the gods above his head, raising the right hand in the act of adoration, as if he were giving thanks to Asshur and his guardian deities on account of his successes.

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It is now time to pass from the military customs of the Assyrians to a consideration of their habits and usages in time of peace, so far as they are made known to us either by historical records or by the pictorial evidence of the has reliefs.  And here it may be convenient to treat separately of the public life of the king and court, and of the private life of the people.

In Assyria, as in most Oriental countries, the keystone of the social arch, the central point of the system, round which all else revolved, and on which all else depended, was the monarch. “L’etat, c’est moi” might have been said with more truth by an Assyrian prince than even by the “Grand Monarque,” whose dictum it is reported to have been.  Alike in the historical notices, and in the sculptures, we have the person of the king presented to us with consistent prominence, and it is consequently with him that we most naturally commence the present portion of our inquiry.