When at last the city or castle was by some of these means reduced, and the garrison consented to surrender itself, the work of demolition, already begun, was completed. Generally the place was set on fire; sometimes workmen provided with pickaxes and other tools mounted upon the ramparts and towers, hurled down the battlements, broke breaches in the walls, or even levelled the whole building. [PLATE CXII., Fig. 1.] Vengeance was further taken by the destruction of the valuable trees in the vicinity, more especially the highly prized date-palms, which were cut with hatchets half through their stems at the distance of about two feet from the ground, and then pulled or pushed down. [PLATE CXI., Fig. 2.] Other trees were either treated similarly, or denuded of their branches. Occasionally the destruction was of a less wanton and vengeful character. Timber-trees were cut down for transport to Assyria, where they were used in the construction of the royal-palaces; and fruit-trees were occasionally taken up by the roots, removed carefully, and planted in the gardens and orchards of the conquerors. Meanwhile there was a general plundering of the captured place. The temples were entered, and the images of the gods, together, with the sacred vessels, which were often of gold and silver, were seized and carried off in triumph. [PLATE CXI., Fig. 4.] This was not mere cupidity. It was regarded as of the utmost importance to show that the gods of the Assyrians were superior to those of other countries, who were powerless to protect either their votaries or even themselves from the irresistible might of the servants of Asshur. The ordinary practice was to convey the images of the foreign gods from the temples of the captured places to Assyria, and there to offer then at the shrines of the principal Assyrian deities. Hence the special force of the proud question, “Where are the gods of Hanath and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? Where are they but carried captive to Assyria, prisoners and slaves in the temples of those deities whose power they ventured to resist?”
The houses of the city were also commonly plundered, and everything of value in them was carried off. Long files of men, each bearing some article of furniture out of the gate of a captured town, are frequent upon the bas-reliefs, where we likewise often observe in the train of a returning army carts laden with household stuff of every kind, alternating with long strings of captives. All the spoil seems to have been first brought by the individual plunderers to one place, where it was carefully sorted and counted in the presence and under the superintendence of royal scribes, who took an exact inventory of the whole before it was carried away by its captors. [PLATE CXI., Fig. 3.] Scales were used to determine the weight of articles made of the precious metals, which might otherwise have been subjected to clipping. We may conclude from these practices that a certain proportion of the value of all private spoil was either due to the royal treasury, or required to be paid to the gods in acknowledgment of their aid and protection. Besides the private spoil, there was a portion which was from the first set apart exclusively for the monarch. This consisted especially of the public treasure of the captured city, the gold and silver, whether in bullion, plate, or ornaments, from the palace of its prince, and the idols, and probably the other valuables from the temples.
The inhabitants of a captured place were usually treated with more or less of severity. Those regarded as most responsible for the resistance or the rebellion were seized; generally their hands were manacled either before them or behind their backs, while sometimes fetters were attached to their feet, and even rings passed through their lips, and in this abject guise they were brought into the presence of the Assyrian king. Seated on his throne in his fortified camp without the place, and surrounded by his attendants, he received them one by one, and instantly pronounced their doom. On some he proudly placed his foot, some he pardoned, a few he ordered for execution, many he sentenced to be torn from their homes and carried into slavery.
Various modes of execution seem to have been employed in the case of condemned captives. One of them was empalement. This has always been, and still remains, a common mode of punishment in the East; but the manner of empaling which the Assyrians adopted was peculiar. They pointed a stake at one end, and, having fixed the other end firmly into the ground, placed their criminal with the pit of his stomach upon the point, and made it enter his body just below the breastbone. This method of empaling must have destroyed life tolerably soon, and have thus been a far less cruel punishment than the crucifixion of the Romans. We do not observe it very often in the Assyrian sculptures, nor do we ever see it applied to more than a few individuals. It was probably reserved for those who were considered the worst criminals. Another very common mode of executing captives was by beating in their skulls with a mace. In this case the victim commonly knelt; his two hands were placed before him upon a block or cushion: behind him stood two executioners, one of whom held him by a cord round the neck, while the other, seizing his back hair in one hand, struck him a furious blow upon the head with a mace which he held in the other. [PLATE CXI., Fig. 5.] It must have been rarely, if ever, that a second blow was needed.
Decapitation was less frequently practised. The expression, indeed. “I cut off their heads,” is common in the Inscriptions but in most instances it evidently refers to the practice, already noticed, of collecting the heads of those who had fallen in battle. Still there are instances, both in the Inscriptions and in the sculptures, of what appears to have been a formal execution of captives by beheading. In these cases the criminal, it would seem, stood upright, or bending a little forwards, and the executioner, taking him by a lock of hair with his left hand, struck his head from his shoulders with a short sword, which he held in his right. [PLATE CXII., Fig. 5.]
It is uncertain whether a punishment even more barbarous than these was not occasionally resorted to. In two or three bas-reliefs executioners are represented in the act of flaying prisoners with a knife. The bodies are extended upon the ground or against a wall, to which they are fastened by means of four pegs attached by strings or thongs to the two wrists and the two ankles. The executioner leans over the victim, and with his knife detaches the skin from the flesh. One would trust that this operation was not performed until life was extinct. We know that it was the practice of the Persians, and even of the barbarous Scythians, to flay the corpses, and not the living forms, of criminals and of enemies; we may hope, therefore, that the Assyrians removed the skin from the dead, to use it as a trophy or as a warning, and did not inflict so cruel a torture on the living.
Sometimes the punishment awarded to a prisoner was mutilation instead of death. Cutting off the ears close to the head, blinding the eyes with burning-irons, cutting off the nose, and plucking out the tongue by the roots, have been in all ages favorite Oriental punishments. We have distinct evidence that some at least of these cruelties were practised by the Assyrians. Asshur-izir-pal tells us in his great Inscription that he often cut off the noses and the ears of prisoners; while a slab of Asshur-bani-pal, the son of Esarhaddon, shows a captive in the hands of the torturers, one of whom holds his head firm and fast, while another thrusts his hand into his mouth for the purpose of tearing out the tongue.
The captives carried away by the conquerors consisted of men, women, and children. The men were formed into bands, under the conduct of officers, who urged theme forward on their way by blows, with small regard to their sufferings. Commonly they were conveyed to the capital, where they were employed by the monarchs in the lower or higher departments of labor, according to their capacities. The skilled workmen were in request to assist in the ornamentation of shrines and palaces, while the great mass of the unskilled were made use of to quarry and drag stone, to raise mounds, make bricks, and the like. Sometimes, instead of being thus employed in task-work in or near the capital, the captives were simply settled in new regions, where it was thought that they would maintain the Assyrian power against native malcontents. Thus Esarhaddon planted Babylonians, Susanchites, Dehavites, Elamites, and others in Samaria, while Sargon settled his Samaritan captives in Gauzanitis and in “the cities of the Medes.”
