224 RIGHTHANDEDNESS. 



evidence appears to furnish somewhat more definite results ; while proot 

 of a wholly different kind leaves no room to doubt that among them a 

 specific hand was recognized as that which every child learned to prefer 

 so 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 Ijis message, the lesson taught 

 him by his withered 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?" 

 'i. e., young children. That the Ninevites and the ancient dwellers on 

 the Euphrates and the Tigris were a right-handed people, appeals to be 

 borne out by their elaborate sculptures, recovered by Botta and Layard 

 at Kourjunjik, Khorsabad, Nlmroud, and other buried cities of the 

 great plain. The sculptures are in relief, and frequently of a less 

 ■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 

 mighiy 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, which has been supposed 

 to be analogous to the Australian boomerang. On the walls of the 

 same palace the great king appears with his staff in his right hand, 

 while his left hand rests on the pommel of his sword. Behind him a 

 eunuch holds in his right hand, over the king's head, a fan or fly-flapper, 

 and so with the other officers in attendance. Soldiers bear their swords 

 and axes in their right hands, and their shields on their left. A pri- 

 soner is being flayed alive by an operator who holds the knife in the 

 right hand. The king himself puts out the eyes of another captive, 

 holding the spear in his right hand, while he retains in his left the end 

 of a cord attached to his victim. Similar evidence abounds throughout 

 the elaborate series of sculptures in the British Museum and in the 

 Louvre. Everywhere gods and men are represented as "discerning 

 between their right hand and their left," and giving the preference to 

 the right. 



It thus appears, so far as enquiry has been carried, that everywhere, 

 from the earliest times, any definite information that can be recovered 

 points to the preferential use of the right hand. The ancient Egyptian^ 

 Hebrew and Assyrian, the Greek and Roman, and seemingly also the 



