The date-palm does not bear well above the alluvium, and such fruit as it produces in the upper country is very little esteemed.

Olives were certainly cultivated under the Empire, and the oil extracted from them was in great request.

Honey was abundant, and wine plentiful.
Sennacherib called his land "a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey;" and the products here enumerated were probably those which formed the chief sustenance of the bulk of the people.
Meat, which is never eaten to any great extent in the East was probably beyond the means of most persons.

Soldiers, however, upon an expedition were able to obtain this dainty at the expense of others; and accordingly we find that on such occasions they freely indulged in it.
We see them, after their victories, killing and cutting up sheep and.
oxen, and then roasting the joints, which are not unlike our own, on the embers of a wood-fires [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig.

2.] In the representations of entrenched camps we are shown the mode in which animals were prepared for the royal dinner.