inated in an ornament, which was sometimes the head of an animal--a
bull, a horse, or a duck--sometimes a more elaborate and complicated
work of art. [PLATE XC., Fig. 3.] Now and then the pole continued level
with the bottom of the body till it had reached its full projection, and
then rose suddenly to the height of the top of the chariot. It was often
strengthened by one or more thin bars, probably of metal; which united
it to the upper part of the chariot-front.

Chariots were drawn either by two or three, never by four, horses. They
seem to have had but a single pole. Where three horses were used, one
must therefore have been attached merely by a rope or thong, like the
side horses of the Greeks, and, can scarcely have been of much service
for drawing the vehicle. He seems rightly regarded as a supernumerary,
intended to take the place of one of the others, should either be
disabled by a wound or accident. It is not easy to determine from the
sculptures how the two draught horses were attached to the pole. Where
chariots are represented without horses, we find indeed that they have
always a cross-bar or yoke; but where horses are represented in the act
of drawing a chariot, the cross-bar commonly disappears altogether. It
would seem that the Assyrian artists, despairing of their ability to
represent the yoke properly when it was presented to the eye end-wise,
preferred, for the most part, suppressing it wholly to rendering it in
an unsatisfactory manner. Probably a yoke did really in every case pass
over the shoulders of the two draught horses, and was fastened by straps
to the collar which is always seen round their necks.

These yokes, or cross-bars, were of various kinds. Sometimes they appear
to have consisted of a mere slight circular bar, probably of metal,
which passed through the pole; sometimes of a thicker spar, through
which the pole itself passed. In this latter case the extremities were
occasionally adorned with heads of animals. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 1.] The
most common kind of yoke exhibits a double curve, so as to resemble a
species of bow unstrung. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 2.] Now and then a specimen
is found very curiously complicated, being formed of a bar curved
strongly at either end, and exhibiting along its course four other
distinct curvatures having opposite to there apertures resembling eyes,
with an upper and a lower eyelid. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 3.] It has been
suggested that this yoke belonged to a four