Sennacherib offered sacrifices to Hoa on the sea-shore after an expedition in the Persian Gulf.

Esarhaddon "slew great and costly sacrifices" at Nineveh upon completing his great palace in that capital.

Sacrifice was clearly regarded as a duty by the kings generally, and was the ordinary mode by which they propitiated the favor of the national deities.
[Illustration: PLATE 144] With respect to the mode of sacrifice we have only a small amount of information, derived from a very few bas-reliefs.

These unite in representing the bull as the special sacrificial animal.

In one we simply see a bull brought up to a temple by the king; but in another, which is more elaborate, we seem to have the whole of a sacrificial scene fairly, if not exactly, brought before us.