The Birds of the Assyrian Monuments and Records. 12.") 
What use did the Assyrians make of the hides of the 
elephants ? Could they have been made into vessels for 
holding water, or for the covering of tents or houses? The 
natives of South Africa to this day use the inner and thin 
skin of the elephant for holding water. Were they ever 
used in the making of their ships, and be sometimes the 
masaci gabrie, " the hardened skins " (Hommel conjectures 
"a sheep"), used for transport? Were they made into 
bucklers as Pliny states was done with elephant hides, which 
were valued as being quite impenetrable? Hecatseus, an 
early distinguished Greek historian (circa B.C. 520), says 
(" Hecataei Milesii Fragmenta," ed. Klausen, p. 249) that the 
people of Cerne (an island off the West Coast of Africa, and 
the great emporium of the Carthaginian trade with Western 
Africa) trafficked with the Ethiopians, and got from them in 
exchange for their commodities "the skins of stags, lions and 
leopards, together with the hides and tusks of elephants 
(ttcoXovcti, Be 7rpo9 Sepfiara iXe(j)dpT(ov fxer 9 ohovrwv). 
Here we have literally in juxtaposition the hi and ca audi 
of the Assyrian records ; the hides of the elephants were 
probably prized by the Assyrians, who employed them for 
some useful purpose or other. 
Although the ca amsi are frequently mentioned in the 
records as the tusks of the elephant, either as ivory obtained 
by them as prize booty from conquered peoples, or (once) as 
chase-spoil in Tiglathpileser's expedition j 1 the animals them- 
selves are rarely alluded to. The only Assyrian monarch 
who, so far as we know, has left it on record that he hunted 
the amii, is Tiglathpileser I (circa B.C. 1120-1100). He states 
that he killed ten fine amSi in the neighbourhood of Kharran 
The account is given by the captain Amenemhib, who served in the monarch's 
campaigns ; he says : " Again [I admired] another extraordinary deed which the 
lord of the country performed in the neighbourhood of Ni. He hunted one 
hundred and twenty elephants for the sake of their tusks on [his chariot (?)]. 
I encountered the greatest among them, which attacked his holiness. I cut 
through his trunk. Being still alive [he pursued me] ; then I went into the 
water between two rocks." (Brugsch's " Egypt under the Pharaohs," I, p. 306 ; 
Murray, 1881.) The word rendered " trunk " is in the original tet, " a hand." 
1 Dr. Lotz has omitted to notice this fact. He says that the lea amii are 
never alluded to at all as chase-booty (pp. 160, 161). 
