* The British Museum possesses bricks bearing the name of
     Tiglath-pileser I., brought from this temple, as is shown by
     the inscription on their sides.

These works were actively carried on notwithstanding the fact that war was raging on the frontier; however preoccupied he might be with warlike projects, Tiglath-pileser never neglected the temples, and set to work to collect from every side materials for their completion and adornment.

[Illustration:  235.jpg TRANSPORT OF BUILDING MATERIALS BY WATER]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze
     doors at Balawat.

He brought, for example, from Nairi such marble and hard stone as might be needed for sculptural purposes, together with the beams of cedar and cypress required by his carpenters.  The mountains of Singar and of the Zab furnished the royal architects with building stone for ordinary uses, and for those facing slabs of bluish gypsum on which the bas-reliefs of the king’s exploits were carved; the blocks ready squared were brought down the affluents of the Tigris on rafts or in boats, and thus arrived at their destination without land transport.

[Illustration:  236.jpg RARE ANIMALS BROUGHT BACK AS TROPHIES BY THE KING]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the cast in the Louvre.  The
     original is in the British Museum.

The kings of Assyria, like the Pharaohs, had always had a passion for rare trees and strange animals; as soon as they entered a country, they inquired what natural curiosities it contained, and they would send back to their own land whatever specimens of them could be procured.

[Illustration:  237.jpg MONKEY BROUGHT BACK AS TRIBUTE]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the bas-relief in Layard.

The triumphal cortege which accompanied the monarch on his return after each campaign comprised not only prisoners and spoil of a useful sort, but curiosities from all the conquered districts, as, for instance, animals of unusual form or habits, rhinoceroses and crocodiles,* and if some monkey of a rare species had been taken in the sack of a town, it also would find a place in the procession, either held in a leash or perched on the shoulders of its keeper.

* A crocodile sent as a present by the King of Egypt is mentioned in the Inscription of the Broken Obelisk.  The animal is called namsukha, which is the Egyptian msuhu with the plural article na.

The campaigns of the monarch were thus almost always of a double nature, comprising not merely a conflict with men, but a continual pursuit of wild beasts.  Tiglath-pileser, “in the service of Ninib, had killed four great specimens of the male urus in the desert of Mitanni, near to the town of Araziki, opposite to the countries of the Khati;* he killed them with his powerful bow, his dagger of iron, his pointed lance,