16 DANIEL WILSON ON THE RIGHT 
On the same temple soldiers are represented holding spears in the near hand, right or 
left, according to the direction they are looking (Pl. 22); and swords and shields are 
D in like manner (PI. 28). The same is seen in the siege scenes and military 
reviews’ of Rameses the Great, on the walls of Thebes and elsewhere. The evidence is 
misleading if the primary aim of architectural decoration is not kept in view. In an 
example from Karnac—appealed to in proof that the Egyptians were a left-handed 
people,—where Thotmes III holds. his offering in the extended left hand, his right 
side is stated to be towards the observer. Nor are similar examples rare. Thoth and 
other deities, sculptured in colossal proportions, on the Grand Temple of Isis, at Phile, 
as shown by Du Camp, in like manner have their right sides towards the observer, 
and hold each the mace or sceptre in the extended left hand. But on turning to the 
photographs of the Great Temple of Denderah, where another colossal series of deities is 
represented in precisely the same attitude, but looking in the opposite direction, the 
official symbols are reversed, and each holds the sceptre in the extended right hand. 
Numerous similar instances are given by Wilkinson ; as in the dedication of the pylon of 
a temple to Amun by Rameses III, Thebes (No. 470); the Goddesses of the West and East, 
looking in corresponding directions (No. 461), ete. 
Examples, however, occur where the conventional formule of Egyptian sculpture 
have been abandoned, and the artist has overcome the difficulties of perspective; as in a 
remarkable scene in the Memnonium, at Thebes, where Atmoo, Thoth, and a female 
(styled by Wilkinson the Goddess of Letters), are all engaged in writing the name of 
Rameses on the fruit of the Persea tree. Though looking in opposite directions, each 
holds the pen in the right hand (Wilkinson, PI. 54 4). So also at Beni Hassan, two artists 
kneeling in front of a board, face each other, and each paint an animal, holding the brush 
in the right hand. At Medinet Habou, Thebes, more than one scene of draught-players 
occurs, where the players, facing each other, each hold the piece in the right hand. Simi- 
lar illustrations repeatedly occur. 
Among another people, of kindred artistic skill, whose records have been brought anew 
to light in recent years, their monumental evidence appears to furnish more definite 
results; while proof of a wholly different kind leaves no room to doubt that among them a 
specific hand was recognised as that which every child learned to prefer as soon as reason 
assumed its sway. When the prophet had proclaimed the destruction of Nineveh, and 
resented the Divine mercy to its repentant people which seemed to falsify his message, 
the lesson taught him by the withering of his gourd is thus set forth: “ And should not 
I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that 
cannot discern between their right hand and their left?” That the Ninevites and the 
ancient dwellers on the Euphrates and the Tigris were a right-handed people appears to 
be borne out by their elaborate sculpture, recovered at Kourjunjik, Khorsabad, Nimroud, 
and other buried cities of the great plain. The sculptures are in relief, and frequently of 
aless conventional character than those of the Egyptian monuments, and are consequently 
less affected by the aspect and position of the figures. The gigantic figure of the Assyrian 
Hercules—or, as supposed, of the mighty hunter, Nimrod—found between the winged 
bulls, in the great court of the Palace of Khorsabad, is represented strangling a young 
lion, which he presses against his chest with his left arm, while he holds in his right 
hand a weapon of the chase, supposed to be analogous to the Australian boomerang. On 
