exploit:  he never subsequently quitted his hereditary domain, but there passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace, if not in idleness.  He died in 860 B.C., after a reign of twenty-five years.  His portraits represent him as a vigorous man, with a brawny neck and broad shoulders, capable of bearing the weight of his armour for many hours at a time.  He is short in the head, with a somewhat flattened skull and low forehead; his eyes are large and deep-set beneath bushy eyebrows, his cheek-bones high, and his nose aquiline, with a fleshy tip and wide nostrils, while his mouth and chin are hidden by moustache and beard.  The whole figure is instinct with real dignity, yet such dignity as is due rather to rank and the habitual exercise of power, than to the innate qualities of the man.*

* Perrot and Chipiez do not admit that the Assyrian sculptors intended to represent the features of their kings; for this they rely chiefly on the remarkable likeness between all the figures in the same series of bas-reliefs.  My own belief is that in Assyria, as in Egypt, the sculptors took the portrait of the reigning sovereign as the model for all their figures.

The character of Assur-nazir-pal, as gathered from the dry details of his Annals, seems to have been very complex.  He was as ambitious, resolute, and active as any prince in the world; yet he refrained from offensive warfare as soon as his victories had brought under his rule the majority of the countries formerly subject to Tiglath-pileser I. He knew the crucial moment for ending a campaign, arresting his progress where one more success might have brought him into collision with some formidable neighbour; and this wise prudence in his undertakings enabled him to retain the principal acquisitions won by his arms.  As a worshipper of the gods he showed devotion and gratitude; he was just to his subjects, but his conduct towards his enemies was so savage as to appear to us cruel even for that terribly pitiless age:  no king ever employed such horrible punishments, or at least none has described with such satisfaction the tortures inflicted on his vanquished foes.

Perhaps such measures were necessary, and the harshness with which he repressed insurrection prevented more frequent outbreaks and so averted greater sacrifice of life.  But the horror of these scenes so appals the modern reader, that at first he can only regard Assur-nazir-pal as a royal butcher of the worst type.

[Illustration:  077.jpg SHALMANESER III.]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell, taken from
     the original stele in the British Museum.

Assur-nazir-pal left to his successor an overflowing treasury, a valiant army, a people proud of their progress and fully confident in their own resources, and a kingdom which had recovered, during several years of peace, from the strain of its previous conquests.  Shalmaneser III.* drew largely on the reserves of men and money which his father’s foresight had prepared, and his busy reign of thirty-five years saw thirty-two campaigns, conducted almost without a break, on every side of the empire in succession.  A double task awaited him, which he conscientiously and successfully fulfilled.