ain water; but the remains of
dams and sluices along its course sufficiently show that it was a canal
for irrigation also. From it water was probably derived to fertilize the
whole triangle lying south of Nimrud between the two streams, a tract
containing nearly thirty square miles of territory, mostly very fertile,
and with careful cultivation well capable of supporting the almost
metropolitan city on which it abutted.

In Assyria it must have been seldom that the Babylonian system of
irrigation could have been found applicable, and the water simply
derived from the rivers by side-cuts, leading it off from the natural
channel. There is but little of Assyria which is flat and alluvial; the
land generally undulates, and most of it stands at a considerable height
above the various streams. The water therefore requires to be raised
from the level of the rivers to that of the lands before it can be
spread over them, and for this purpose hydraulic machinery of one kind
or another is requisite. In cases where the subterranean conduit was
employed, the Assyrians probably (like the ancient and the modern
Persians) sank wells at intervals, and raised the water from them by
means of a bucket and rope, the latter working over a pulley. Where they
could obtain a bank of a convenient height overhanging a river, they
made use of the hand-swipe, and with its aid lifted the water into a
tank or reservoir, whence they could distribute it over their fields. In
some instances, it would seem, they brought water to the tops of hills
by means of aqueducts, and then, constructing a number of small
channels, let the fluid trickle down them among their trees and crops.
They may have occasionally, like the modern Arabs, employed the labor of
an animal to raise the fluid; but the monuments do not furnish us with
any evidence of their use of this method. Neither do we find any trace
of water-wheels, such as are employed upon the Orontes and other swift
rivers, whereby a stream can itself be made to raise water from the land
along its bunks.

According to Herodotus, the kinds of grain cultivated in Assyria in his
time were wheat, barley, sesame, and millet. As these still constitute
at the present day the principal agricultural products of the county, we
may conclude that they were in all probability the chief species
cultivated under the Empire. The plough used, if we may judge by the
single representation of it which has come down to us, was of