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Updated: June 10, 2025
The dagger was worn by the Assyrian kings at almost all times in their girdles, and was further often assigned to the mythic winged beings, hawk headed or human-headed, which occur so frequently in the sculptures; but it seems to have been very seldom carried by subjects.
On the whole, it seems probable that it resembled the great propylaea at the head of the stairs leading from the plain rather than the central propylaea just described. Part of its ornamentation was certainly a colossal bull, though whether human-headed or not cannot be determined.
To each of these elevations stairs led, either double flights along the sides or single front stairs, always on the eastern walls. At the sides of the stairs and doors stood, alternately, great Egyptian sphinxes, or winged Assyrian human-headed bulls.
This was the favorite god of Nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor were conferred upon him, as "King of heaven and earth," the "Lord of all beings," etc. He goes before kings in their military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. His emblem is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces.
The bull appears in the bas-reliefs of Persepolis among the evil, or at any rate hostile, powers, which the king combats and slays; and though in these representations the animal is not winged or human-headed, yet on some cylinders apparently Persian, the monarch contends with bulls of exactly the same type as that which is assigned in other cylinders to the upholders of Ormazd.
So the human-headed Evil laid its ear against the lips of Meriamun, and Meriamun laid her lips against its ear, and they whispered each to each. There in the darkness they whispered, while the witch-light glittered down the grey snake's shining folds, beamed in its eyes, and shone through the Queen's dark hair and on her snowy breast.
They were ornamented with colossal human-headed bulls on either side, and probably spanned by an arch above, the archivolte being covered with enamelled bricks disposed in a pattern. Received within the portals, the visitor found himself in front of a long wall of solid stone masonry, the revetement of the lower terrace, which rose from the outer court to a height of at least twenty feet.
We again encounter this same base with its opposing curves in a curious monument discovered at Kouyundjik by Mr. George Smith. This is a small and carefully executed model, in yellowstone, of a winged human-headed bull, supporting on his back a vase or base similar in design to that figured above. This little object must have served as a model for the carvers engaged upon the palace walls.
The first thing he saw on the hill was the Blue Ghost, not in his apparition form, but as the human-headed light they had chased. Then he realized that he was also seeing a form under the light, a human shape silhouetted faintly against the dark sky! He choked back an exclamation. There were two other shapes, unlighted, but clearly human. This was what the tenant farmer had seen!
The grand south-east portals or propylæa were adorned with huge human-headed bulls and gigantic figures, and gave access to a large court, 315 ft. by 280 ft., on the east side of which are the stables and out-houses, and on the west side the metal stores. The portals to this portion of the palace were also adorned with human-headed bulls.
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