376 FISH— VIVARIA— FIRST POACHING 



The task would seem more formidable, for two reasons : first, 

 the short time that cuneiform as compared with hieroglyph 

 writing has been deciphered, and the wider study which 

 Egyptian excavation has attracted ; and second, the Assyrian 

 artist treated his subjects more generally and more conven- 

 tionally than his confreres in Egypt. Although in the sea and 

 river scenes fish and shells are introduced, scarcely any distinc- 

 tions mark particular ichthyic species. Contrast with this the 

 representations of the return of Hatasu's expedition from the 

 land of Punt or Arabia. Here the artists depict the fishes 

 so characteristically that Doenitz has identified them as 

 belonging to the Red Sea, and even determined the species of 

 each. 



We can recognise in the rivers, crabs, sometimes with a fish 

 caught in their claws, eels (or water-snakes), and small turtles. 

 When the sculptor wished to indicate the sea, he made these 

 fish larger, and to emphasise his point added others, which are 

 only inhabitants of salt water, e.g. the star-fish, i 



Within the last five years identification ~ of Mesopotamian 

 fish has been carried further by Dr. Harri Holma of Helsingfors,^ 

 and by Professor Langdon.* 



From the latter I take the following Hst : — 



" I. The huradu, of the skate and ray type. This flat fish is the 

 most common of all species in Southern Babylonia from the earliest 

 historical period. The Sumerians knew it as the suhuru fish, and 

 speak of it as ' bearded,' referring to a kind of skate fish with long 

 hairs about the mouth. They mention also the ' goat-skate,' and 

 the ' lower lipped skate.' Dr. Holma's statement (p. 96) that the 

 suhuru cannot be the skate, turbot, or plaice, because these have no 

 beards, has been contraverted, since fish of the skate type often have 

 long feelers at the mouth resembling a beard. 



"2. The kuppt}, said to be the rhombus maximus. 



^ Layard Monuments of Nineveh {op. cii.), vol. II. p. 438. 



2 The identification, which is avowedly more of a philological than a 

 scientifically zoological nature, is in the cases of Nos. 2 and 3a" terminological 

 inexactitude," for as Dr. Boulenger's lists show, neither the turbot nor the 

 sole occur in the Persian Gulf. Cf. Proc. Zoological Society, 1887, p. 653 ; 

 1889, p. 236, and 1892, p. 134. 



• Monograph, Kleine Beitnige zum assyrischen Lexicon (Helsingfors, 

 J912). 



♦ Sumerian Grammar (London, 191 7). P- 60. 



