throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils; twenty talents from Nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from the same city for firewood.  Certain provinces were expected to maintain the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry in military operations.  The most highly prized animals came, perhaps, from Asia Minor; the nations of Mount Taurus, who had supplied chargers to Israel and Egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses to the squadrons of Nineveh.  The breed was small, but robust, inured to fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these countries at the present day.  In war, horses formed a very considerable proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was carried on with Mesopotamia.

[Illustration:  315.jpg A TYPICAL CAPPADOCIAN HORSE]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Alfred Boissier.

After the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses.

Tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon Assyria the character by which it was known during the most splendid century of its history, and the organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the Oriental genius that it survived the fall of Nineveh, and served as a model for every empire-maker down to the close of the Macedonian era and even beyond it.

[Illustration:  316.jpg A SYRIAN BIT-KHILANI]

     Reproduced by Faucher-Gudin, from the restoration published
     by Luschan.

The wealth of the country grew rapidly, owing to the influx of capital and of foreign population; in the intervals between their campaigns its rulers set to work to remove all traces of the ruins which had been allowed to accumulate during the last forty years.  The king had built himself a splendid palace at Calah, close to the monuments of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser III., and its terraces and walls overhung the waters of the Tigris.  The main entrance consisted of a Bit-khilani, one of those porticoes, flanked by towers and supported by columns or pillars, often found in Syrian towns, the fashion for which was now beginning to spread to Western Asia.*