had descended from the car to the plain, the infuriated beast might make his spring at the royal person, in which case it must have required a stout heart to stand unmoved, and aim a fresh arrow at a vital part while the creature was in mid-air, especially if (as we sometimes see represented) a second lion was following close upon the first, and would have to be received within a few seconds.  It would seem that the lions on some occasions were not to be goaded into making an attack, but simply endeavored to escape by flight.  To prevent this, troops were drawn up in a double line of spearmen and archers round the space within which the lions were let loose, the large shields of the front or spearmen line forming a sort of wall, and the spears a chevaux de frise, through which it was almost impossible for the beasts to break.  In front of the soldiers, attendants held hounds in leashes, which either by their baying and struggling frightened the animals back, or perhaps assisted to despatch them. [PLATE CXIX., Fig. 3.] The king meanwhile plied his bow, and covered the plain with carcasses, often striking a single beast with five or six shafts.

The number of lions destroyed at these royal battues is very surprising.  In one representation no fewer than eighteen are seen upon the field, of which eleven are dead and five seriously wounded.  The introduction of trapped beasts would seem to imply that the game, which under the earlier monarchs had been exceedingly abundant,—­failed comparatively under the later ones, who therefore imported it from a distance.  It is evident, however, that this scarcity was not allowed to curtail the royal amusement.  To gratify the monarch, hunters sought remote and savage districts, where the beast was still plentiful, and, trapping their prey, conveyed it many hundreds of miles to yield a momentary pleasure to the royal sportsman.

It is instructive to contrast with the boldness shown in the lion-hunts of this remote period the feelings and conduct of the present inhabitants of the region.  The Arabs, by whom it is in the main possessed, are a warlike race, accustomed from infancy to arms and inured to combat.  “Their hand is against every man, and every man’s hand is against them.”  Yet they tremble if a lion is but known to be near, and can only with the utmost difficulty be persuaded by an European to take any part in the chase of so dangerous an animal.

The lioness, no less than the lion, appears as a beast of chase upon the sculptures.  It seems that in modern times she is quite as much feared as her consort.  Indeed, when she has laid up cubs, she is even thought to be actually the more dangerous of the two. [PLATE CXX., Fig. 1.]

[Illustration:  PLATE 120]