We present some
passages from these stories of campaigns:
Assurnazir-hapal in 882 says, "I built a wall before the great gates
of the city; I flayed the chiefs of the revolt and with their skins I
covered this wall. Some were immured alive in the masonry, others were
crucified or impaled along the wall. I had some of them flayed in my
presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their
heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form of
garlands."
In 745 Tiglath-Pilezer II writes, "I shut up the king in his royal
city. I raised mountains of bodies before his gates. All his villages
I destroyed, desolated, burnt. I made the country desert, I changed it
into hills and mounds of debris."
In the seventh century Sennacherib wrote: "I passed like a hurricane
of desolation. On the drenched earth the armor and arms swam in the
blood of the enemy as in a river. I heaped up the bodies of their
soldiers like trophies and I cut off their extremities. I mutilated
those whom I took alive like blades of straw; as punishment I cut off
their hands." In a bas-relief which shows the town of Susa
surrendering to Assurbanipal one sees the chiefs of the conquered
tortured by the Assyrians; some have their ears cut off, the eyes of
others are put out, the beard torn out, while some are flayed alive.
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