External Characters of Ruminant Artiodactyla. 113 



liowever, lia3 n coUiii' on the neck suspiciously sii^^gfslive of 

 doinesticalioii. It may he noticed, too, that the elevafed 

 caniage of the head recalls that of ihi! (iiijrati zehii shown on 

 pi. xvii. Lydekkcf also leniaiks, in connection with this 

 snpno.sed auroch-*, that it i.s " qnite unlike the figure of tie 

 ancient Assyrian humped ox " reproduced on p. 1-40 of his 

 book. Of lliese he wrote : — " In tho contour of the neck and 

 shoulders, as well as in the tlirection of tho horns, the repie- 

 sentations of these humped cattle differ widely from those 

 appaiiMitly reprcscnliM^ th.i aurochs (p. G4). That these 

 long-horned cattle did not come from Egypt is demonstrated 

 by the presence of the well-developed hump, but tiie horns 

 are of the Egyptian typo." 



I cannot in any way reconcile these stati^ments with tho 

 facts. The figure shows a pair of heavily built, short-bodied, 

 long-legged oxen, with high carriage of the head. The animal 

 in the foregrouml is {)dletl,and has a very poorly, not a well- 

 developed hump. It might pass for a polled zebu with an 

 incipient hump, although tho dewlap is absent, instead of 

 being well grown as it is in that breed. The animal in the 

 background, mostly hidden by its companion, has stout Jiorns 

 of medium length, which, instead of resembling, as alleged, 

 those of the Egyptian cattle in their upward trend, are turned 

 horizontally forwards in a line with the back, the point only 

 being hooked upwards, almost exactly as in the figure of the 

 Augsburg aurochs (pi. iii.). These horns appear to mo to 

 diiler in no important respect from those of the supposed 

 Assyrian aurochs, except that they are a little longer. The 

 liump is not shown in the illustration ; hence, if present, it 

 was not larger than that of the ox in the foreground. 

 Granting the presence of abm;dl hump, it may bo maintained 

 that in that particular only does the horned bull of the pair 

 in question, believed to be a zt'bu, dift'er from the above-quoted 

 Nineveh hnll, believed to bo an aurochs. 



If Lydekker's identification of the^o two Assyrian bulls be 

 correct, it seems to me that the conclusion derived theretrom 

 is precisely the opposite of that which he maintains, in tlio 

 sense that the case supplies very strong evidence of the 

 aurochs descent of the zebu. But apart from allowing that 

 these Assyrian sculptures iurnish interesting evidence of the 

 existence of domesticated cattle a[)proacliing the zehu-t} pe in 

 nwiny parlicuhirs in Mesopotamia at an early historic period, 

 I do not think very groat reliance should be placed upon 

 slruetural dt-tuils in mouldings apparently largely conven- 

 tional. My purpose in reterring to these and other cases 

 Ann. cO May. N. Hist. Scr. i). Vol. iii. 8 



