ace speaks of Assyrian nard Virgil of
Assyrian _amomuum_, Tibullus of Assyrian odors generally. AEschylus has
an allusion of the same kind in his Agamemnon. Euripide, and Theocritus,
who mention respectively Syrian myrrh and Syrian frankincense, probably
use the word "Syrian" for "Assyrian." The belief thus implied is not,
however, borne out by inquiry. Neither the spikenard nor the amonmum,
nor the myrrh tree, nor the frankincense tree, nor any other actual
spice, is produced within the limits of Assyria, which must always have
imported its own spices from abroad, and can only have supplied them to
other countries as a carrier. In this capacity she may very probably,
even in the time of her early greatness, have conveyed on to the coast
of Syria the spicy products of Arabia and India, and thus have created
an impression, which afterwards remained as a tradition, that she was a
great spice-producer as well as a spice-seller.

In the same way, as a carrier, Assyria may have exported many other
commodities. She may have traded with the Phoenicians, not only in her
own products, but in the goods which she received from the south and
east, from Bactria, India, and the Persian Gulf,--such as lapis lazuli,
pearls, cinnamon, muslins, shawls, ivory, ebony, cotton. On the other
hand, she may have conveyed to India, or at least to Babylon, the
productions which the Phoenicians brought to Tyre and Sidon from the
various countries bordering upon the Mediterranean Sea and even the
Atlantic Ocean, as tin, hides, pottery, oil, wine, linen. On this point,
however, we have at present no evidence at all; and as it is not the
proper office of a historian to indulge at any length in mere
conjecture, the consideration of the commercial dealings of the
Assyrians may be here brought to a close.

On the agriculture of the Assyrians a very few remarks will be offered.
It has been already explained that the extent of cultivation depended
entirely on the conveyance of water. There is good reason to believe
that the Assyrians found a way to spread water over almost the whole of
their territory. Either by the system of _kanats_ or subterranean
aqueducts, which has prevailed in the East from very early times, or by
an elaborate network of canals, the fertilizing fluid was conveyed to
nearly every part of Mesopotamia, which shows by its innumerable mounds,
in regions which are now deserts, how large a population it was made to
sustain under the wis