uyunjik.

The wild boar, and his relative, the domestic hog, inhabited the
morasses. Assyrian sculptors amused themselves sometimes by representing
long gaunt sows making their way through the cane-brakes, followed by
their interminable offspring. The hog remained here, as in Egypt, in
a semi-tamed condition, and the people were possessed of only a small
number of domesticated animals besides the dog--namely, the ass, ox,
goat, and sheep; the horse and camel were at first unknown, and were
introduced at a later period.*

[Illustration: 037.jpg THE SOW AND HER LITTER MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH A
BED OF REEDS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Kouyunjik.

* The horse is denoted in the Assyrian texts by a group of
signs which mean "the ass of the East," and the camel by
other signs in which the character for "ass" also appears.
The methods of rendering these two names show that the
subjects of them were unknown in the earliest times; the
epoch of their introduction is uncertain. A chariot drawn by
horses appears on the "Stele of the Vultures." Camels are
mentioned among the booty obtained from the Bedouin of the
desert.

We know nothing of the efforts which the first inhabitants--Sumerians
and Semites--had to make in order to control the waters and to bring the
land under culture: the most ancient monuments exhibit them as already
possessors of the soil, and in a forward state of civilization.* Their
chief cities were divided into two groups: one in the south, in the
neighbourhood of the sea; the other in a northern direction, in the
region where the Euphrates and Tigris are separated from each other by
merely a narrow strip of land. The southern group consisted of seven, of
which Eridu lay nearest to the coast. This town stood on the left bank
of the Euphrates, at a point which is now called Abu-Shahrein. A little
to the west, on the opposite bank, but at some distance from the stream,
the mound of Mugheir marks the site of Uru, the most important, if not
the oldest, of the southern cities. Lagash occupied the site of the
modern Telloh to the north of Eridu, not far from the Shatt-el-Hai;
Nisin and Mar, Larsam and Uruk, occupied positions at short distances
from each other on the marshy ground which extends between the Euphrates
and the Shatt-en-Nil. The inscriptions mention here and there other
less important places, of which the ruins have not yet been