124 The Birds of the Assyrian Monuments and Records. 
part of a great treasure ; also in Esarhad don's records 
(W.A.L, I, pi. 45, 1. 20), where the skins are mentioned 
among the treasures of the palace of Abdimilcutti, king of 
Sidon. The skins of the am§i were taken home from his 
hunting expeditions by Tiglathpileser I, and appear to have 
held a high place in the estimation of the Assyrian monarchs. 
One naturally inquired on what account elephants' hides 
were so much prized. Again, the scribe who, in his records 
on the Broken Obelisk (W.A.I., I, pi. 28), gives an account 
of one of Tiglathpileser's hunting excursions, states that the 
amsi were killed by the king's bow ; no mention is made of 
any other destructive weapon; and as some auxiliary methods 
of capture must have been employed in the destruction of a 
thick-skinned elephant, one naturally looks for some hint of 
the same ; still, I do not consider that this point contains 
any real difficulty, because some auxiliary weapon might 
have been employed, though not definitely mentioned, the 
king or the scribe caring merely to record the destruction of 
the animals, in which the strong bows of the Assyrians formed 
the chief implement. 1 
1 Strabo ("G-eogr.," XIY, 4, 10), Diodorus (III, cap. 27), and Pliny ("Nat. 
Hist.," VIII, 8) are careful to mention the various modes of capturing wild 
elephants as practised by the Elephantophagi or "elephant eaters" of the Arabian 
Gulf. Stealthily the hunters would approach the animals, and, unperceived, ham- 
string them (vevpoK07rovcrt) by a sharp sword-stroke ; or the arrows were dipped 
in the poison of serpents. According to Diodorus, the hunters hide near a tree, 
and as the elephant passes, he seizes it by the tail, and with his own feet he clasps 
the animal's thighs ; then with a small sharp axe, which is fixed on his shoulder, 
he hacks away at the animal's leg with wonderful adroitness and activity. The 
elephant thus wounded either falls down or runs away as fast as he is able, the 
pursuer following and still hacking away at the poor creature's leg ; at length 
completely disabled, he falls, and the Ethiopian hunters run in crowds, and 
horrible to narrate, " cutting off collops of the flesh while the animal is still 
alive (/cat ££>ptos €tl tc/jlvovtcs ras aapicas e* ra>v ottivBsv fiepcov), they feast mer- 
rily." (Ill, 26 ; ed. Dindorf .) The bows, according to Strabo (loc. cit.) and Pliny 
(" Nat. Hist.," loc. cit.), the elephant hunters used were of enormous strength ; 
were fixed in the ground at intervals in places frequented by the animals ; the 
bows were kept steady by young men remarkable for their strength ; while others, 
exerting themselves to the utmost, would bend them and shoot and wound the 
elephants as they passed. In the battles of the Romans against Pyrrhus, it was 
found an easy thing to cut off the trunks of the elephants with a sharp sword, and 
they would soon bleed to death (Pliny, "Nat. Hist.," viii, 7). It is interesting 
to note that this was the method employed in time of the Egyptian king 
Men-kheper-ra, or Thothmes III, " the Alexander the Great of Egyptian history." 
