There is reason to believe that the Assyrians drank wine very freely.  The vine was cultivated extensively, in the neighborhood of Nimrud and elsewhere; and though there is no doubt that, grapes were eaten, both raw and dried, still the main purpose of the vineyards was unquestionably the production of wine.  Assyria was “a land of corn and wine,” emphatically and before all else.  Great banquets seem to have been frequent at the court, as at the courts of Babylon and Persia, in which drinking was practised on a large scale.  The Ninevites generally are reproached as drunkards by Nahum.  In the banquet-scenes of the sculptures, it is drinking and not eating that is represented.  Attendants dip the wine-cups into a huge bowl or vase, which stands on the ground and reaches as high as a man’s chest and carry them full of liquor to the guests, who straightway fall to a carouse. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 1.]

[Illustration:  PLATE 138]

The arrangement of the banquets is curious.  The guests, who are in one instance some forty or fifty in number, instead of being received at a common table, are divided into messes of four, who sit together, two and two, facing each other, each mess having its own table and its own attendant.  The guests are all clothed in the long tasselled gown, over which they wear the deeply fringed belt and cross-belt.  They have sandals on their feet, and on their arias armlets and bracelets.  They sit on high stools, from which their legs dangle; but in no case have they footstools, which would apparently have been a great convenience.  Most of the guests are bearded men, but intermixed with them we see a few eunuchs.  Every guest holds in his right hand a wine-cup of a most elegant shape, the lower part modelled into the form of a lion’s head, from which the cup itself rises in a graceful curve. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 2.] They all raise their cups to a level with their heads, and look as if they were either pledging each other, or else one and all drinking the same toast.  Both the stools and the tables are handsome, and tastefully, though not very richly, ornamented.  Each table is overspread with a table-cloth, which hangs down on either side opposite the guests, but does not cover the ends of the table, which are thus fully exposed to view.  In their general make the tables exactly resemble that used in a banquet scene by a king of a later date, but their ornamentation is much less elaborate.  On each of them appears to have been placed the enigmatical article of which mention has been already made as a strange object generally accompanying the king.  Alongside of it we see in most instances a sort of rude crescent.  These objects have probably, both of them, a sacred import, the crescent being the emblem of Sin, the Moon-God, while the nameless article had some unknown religious use or meaning.