We have a few remains of Assyrian toilet articles.  A bronze disk, about nine inches in diameter, with a long handle attached, is thought to have been a mirror.  In its general shape it resembles both the Egyptian and the classical mirrors; but, unlike them, it is perfectly plain, even the handle being a mere flat bar. [PLATE CXXXVI., Fig. 3.] We have also a few combs.  One of these is of iron, about three and a half inches long, by two inches broad in the middle.  It is double, like a modern small-tooth comb, but does not present the feature, common in Egypt, of a difference in the size of the teeth on the two sides.  The very ancient use of this toilet article in Mesopotamia is evidenced by the fact, already noticed, that it was one of the original hieroglyphs whence the later letters were derived.  Another comb is of lapis lazuli, and has only a single row of teeth. [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig. 1.] The small vases of alabaster or fine clay, and the small glass bottles which have been discovered in tolerable abundance, were also in all probability intended chiefly for the toilet.  They would hold the perfumed unguents which the Assyrians, like other Orientals, were doubtless in the habit of using, and the dyes wherewith they sought to increase the beauty of the countenance.

[Illustration:  PLATE 137]

No doubt the luxury of the Assyrian women in these and other respects was great and excessive.  They are not likely to have fallen short of their Jewish sisters either in the refinements or in the corruptions of civilization.  When then we hear of the “tinkling ornaments” of the Jewish women in Isaiah’s time, “their combs, and round tires like the moon,” their “chains and bracelets and mufflers,” their “bonnets, and ornaments of the legs, and head-bands, and tablets and ear-rings,” their “rings and nose-jewels,” their “changeable suits of apparel, and mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins,” their “glasses, and fine linen, and hoods, and veils,” their “sweet smells, and girdles, and well-set hair, and stomachers,” we may be sure that in Assyria too these various refinements, or others similar to them, were in use, and consequently that the art of the toilet was tolerably well advanced under the second great Asiatic Empire.  That the monuments contain little evidence on the point need not cause any surprise; since it is the natural consequence of the spirit of jealous reserve common to the Oriental nations, which makes them rarely either represent women in their mimetic art or speak of them in their public documents.

If various kinds of grain were cultivated in Assyria, such as wheat, barley, sesame, and millet, we may assume that the food of the inhabitants, like that of other agricultural nations, consisted in part of bread.  Sesame was no doubt used, as it is at the present day, principally for making oil; while wheat, barley, and millet were employed for food, and were made into cakes or loaves.  The grain used, whatever