SAME WORD EQUALS PIOOK AND THORN 357 



conjectured that in the latter word we have the Assyrian term for 

 fish-hook. Professor S. Langdon, who in a letter to me advances 

 this conjecture, goes even farther — " in fact hdhu is our only 

 direct evidence for the practice of fishing with hook and line 

 in Assyria." 



Basing himself on a similar Hebraic resemblance, he would 

 make the Assyrian sinniidn, " two reins," come from a supposed 

 sinnitu, a possible feminine of sinnu, which occurs perhaps 

 in the sense of " thorn," and carry the same meaning as the 

 Hebrew sen, which probably equals " thorn," while its plural 

 sinndth does stand for " fish-hooks," 



He believes that in the word, aharshu, which Esarhaddon 

 employs, " I snatched him (Abdi-J\Iilkuti, King of Sidon) as a 

 fish from the sea," and again, of a chief of the Lebanon range 

 who had rebelled and fled, " I caught him from the mountains 

 like a bird," we have evidence of a technical word for pulling 

 or jerking out a fish with a line held in the hand, or perhaps 

 attached to a Rod, because " snatch " would hardly be the 

 appropriate term for the slower action involved in the drawing 

 in of a net.^ 



Whether in the first simile the suggestion is philologically 

 valid is a point for Assyrian scholars to determine. The 

 adequate rendering or explaining of Sumerian words by 

 Assyrian ones is often difficult and doubtful, for while the 

 latter language is a great help to understanding the former, 

 the Assyrian, especially the later Assyrian, equivalent does not 

 entirely correspond to what would be expected from a Hteral 

 analysis of the Sumerian word. The second simile, I hold, 

 alludes to the Net of the fowler, with which the representations 

 show the Ass5nians to have been familiar. 



^ In each case Esarhaddon " cut off his head." Both heads were sent 

 to Nineveh for exhibition. Asur-bani-pal was a greater speciaUst in heads 

 than his father: the head of any foe whom he particularly hated or feared, 

 such as Teumann of Elam, was preserved by some method, and hung con- 

 spicuously in the famed gardens of the palace. A sculptured representation 

 hands down the scene to us. The king reclines on an elevated couch under 

 an arbour of vines : his favourite queen is seated on a throne at the foot of 

 the couch : both are raising wine cups to their lips : many attendants ply 

 the inevitable fly-flappers, while at a distance musicians are ranged. Birds 

 play and flutter among the palm and cypress trees ; from one dangles 

 Teumann's head on which the eyes of the king are gloating. Such is the 

 picture drawn by de Razogin, Ancient Assyria (London, i88S). 



