412 ROD NOT EMPLOYED—REASONS 
even of a mild understudy to Ashur-bani-pal.! The Bible 
gives but two—Esau’s brother scarcely ranks as one—hunter- 
characters : Esau “a cunning hunter,’’ and Nimrod “ a mighty 
hunter before the Lord.”” Even the latter of these two heroes 
was no Israelite, but a king “‘ of Accad,’”’ a Sumero-Assyrian, 
whom some writers identify with Gilgamesh. 
Such indifference to or aversion from the chase cannot 
either at the time of the invasion of Palestine (Exodus xxiii. 29), 
or subsequently be ascribed to the lack of wild beasts or of 
game, for we read of lions, bears, jackals, foxes, etc., and of 
hart, fallow deer, and antelope. 
Two reasons—neither, to my mind, satisfactory—have been 
advanced to explain this attitude as regards hunting, a pursuit 
which admittedly has played, both as a necessity and a pastime, 
an important part in the education and evolution of mankind. 
The first : the Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament, 
had already reached the stage of pastoral nomads, when 
“hunting, which is the subsistence of the ruder wanderer, has 
come to be only an extra means of life.” 2 
The second: the Hebrews, hampered perhaps by certain 
peculiarities of their religion, or on account of the density of 
the population were not often induced “to revert for amuse- 
ment to what their ancestors had been compelled to practise 
from necessity.’’ 3 
Either, or both, of these reasons might have carried weight, 
had it not been for the existence hard by in Assyria of a people, 
among whom, although sprung from the Semitic stock, hunting 
was a recognised and popular pastime, and this despite a 
population far denser. 
Nor, again, when we compare the culture of the two nations, 
can’ Lacépéde’s previously quoted dictum that in civilisation 
the fisher nation is usually more advanced than the hunter 
" It is fair to record that some of the Assyrian monarchs preferred a battle 
mid safer surroundings, for in representations the head keepers are seen 
letting the lions, etc., out of cages for their royal master to pot! Parks 
(wapdSeco1) and districts were strictly preserved by both Assyrian and 
Persian rulers; in England for several reigns the penalty for poaching in the 
New and other Royal Forests was death. 
2 E B. Tylor, Anthropology (London, 1881), p. 220. 
3M. G. Watkins, Gleanings from Natural History (London, 1885), ch. 1o. 
