The Birds of the Assyrian Monyments and Records. 51 
the Assyrians practise falconry, or keep song-birds for the 
sake of their music? What particular birds were held 
sacred to their gods ? All these are questions which can 
only very imperfectly be answered. Certain birds, we may 
be sure, were used for food ; and the lists which have 
the determinative prefix (^yH^ of food enumerate some 
birds in the catalogue, but here again unfortunately the 
tablets are sadly broken, and the useful Accadian is often 
almost entirely lost. Such kinds as were considered to be 
injurious to the crops are mentioned as being good for food. 
This would comprise sparrows, finches, larks, buntings, and a 
host of the small insessorial birds. We may also be quite sure 
that they ate pigeons, wild-ducks, partridges, quails, francolins, 
and many other kinds perhaps. The swan, whose head and 
neck are drawn on the monuments as a figure-head of a soldier's 
bow — fitly there, perhaps, as emblematic of strength — perhaps 
was used as food. Whether any of the rapacious birds of 
prey were ever used as food, I know not ; but we may be 
certain that the Assyrians made use of birds' eggs. To 
what extent, if to any, poultry-keeping, or the rearing of 
thoroughly domesticated fowls, ducks, and geese, as we 
understand the term, was practised, we know not. There is 
no mention of domestic fowls in the Old Testament writings, 
though we know that the art of hatching hens' eggs by 
artificial incubation was largely practised by the ancient 
Egyptians. The tame duck, however, as we understand the 
term by the familiar waddling bird of our farmyards, was not 
domesticated by the Egyptians, I believe, and even the 
Greeks and Romans kept ducks only in a semi-domesticated 
state, for they had to enclose their duck preserves (nesso- 
trophcea) with nets to prevent the birds flying out. With 
regard to domestic fowls, when we remember that the cock 
is called by Aristophanes the Persian bird, and that the 
domestic fowl is said to be figured on a Babylonian cylinder 
of the sixth or seventh century before Christ, and that the 
cock under several names is mentioned in the food-lists, 
it is pretty certain that the Assyrians kept domestic poultry. 
Natural history evidence points to the East, as to India, 
for the origin of our domestic bird, with all its numerous 
