Probably the earliest contrivance for transporting the chariots, the stores, and the engines across a river was a raft, composed hastily of the trees and bushes growing in the neighborhood of the stream, and rendered capable of sustaining a considerable weight by the attachment to it of a number of inflated skins.

A representation of such a raft, taken from a slab of Sennacherib, has been already given.

Rafts of this kind are still largely employed in the navigation of the Mesopotamian streams, and, being extremely simple in their construction, may reasonably be supposed to have been employed by the Assyrians from the very foundation of their empire.
To these rafts would naturally have succeeded boats of one kind or another.

As early as the time of Tiglath-Pileser I.( ab.

B.C.