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 confréves 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.! 
Within the last five years identification 2 of Mesopotamian 
fish has been carried further by Dr. Harri Holma of Helsingfors, 
and by Professor Langdon.¢ 
From the latter I take the following list :— 
‘*r, The buradu, of the skate andray 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 swhuru 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 kuppd, said to be the rhombus maximus. 
1 Layard Monuments of Nineveh (op. cit.), 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 3 a “ 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. 
3 Monograph, Kleine Beitvage zum assyvischen Lexicon (Helsingfors, 
J912). 
F 1 tie Grammar (London, 1917), p. 60, 
