sions: the harp, the lyre, and the
double pipe had likewise a place in them.

In actual war, it would appear that music was employed very sparingly,
if at all, by the Assyrians. No musicians are ever represented in the
battle-scenes: nor are the troops accompanied by any when upon the
march. Musicians are only seen conjoined with troops in one or two
marching processions, apparently of a triumphal character. It may
consequently be doubted whether the Assyrian armies, when they went out
on their expeditions, were attended, like the Egyptian and Roman armies,
by military bands. Possibly, the musicians in the processional scenes
alluded to belong to the court rather than to the camp, and merely take
part as civilians in a pageant, wherein a share is also assigned to the
soldiery.

In proceeding, as already proposed, to speak of the navigation of the
Assyrians, it must be at once premised that it is not as mariners, but
only as fresh-water sailors, that they come within the category of
navigators at all. Originally an inland people, they had no power, in
the earlier ages of their history, to engage in any but the secondary
and inferior kind of navigation; and it would seem that, by the time
when they succeeded in opening to themselves through their conquests a
way to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, their habits had become
so fixed in this respect that they no longer admitted of change. There
is satisfactory evidence which shows that they left the navigation of
the two seas at the two extremities of their empire to the subject
nations--the Phoenicians and the Babylonians contenting themselves with
the profits without sharing the dangers of marine voyages, while their
own attention was concentrated upon their two great rivers--the Tigris
and the Euphrates, which formed the natural line of communication
between the seas in question.

The navigation of these streams was important to the Assyrians in two
ways. In the first place it was a military necessity that they should be
able, _readily and without delay_, to effect the passage of both of
them, and also of their tributaries, which were frequently too deep to
be forded. Now from very early times it was probably found tolerably
easy to pass an army over a great river by swimming, more especially
with the aid of inflated skins, which would be soon employed for the
purpose. But the _materiel_ of the army--the provisions, the chariots,
and the siege machines--was not s