FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54  
55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   >>   >|  
lls of his palace in a long inscription in which he told of his victories, the booty which he had taken, the cities burned, the captives beheaded or flayed alive. 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. Evidently these kings took delight in burnings, massacres, and tortures. =Ruin of the Assyrian Empire.=--The Assyrian regime began with the capture of Babylon (about 1270). From the ninth century the Assyrians, always at war, subjected or ravaged Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, and even Egypt. The conquered always revolted, and the massacres were repeated. At last the Assyrians were exhausted. The Babylonians and Medes made an alliance and destroyed their empire. In 625 their capital, Nineveh, "the lair of lions, the bloody city, the city gorged with prey," as the Jewish prophets call it, was taken and destroyed forever. "Nineveh is laid waste," says the prophet Nahum, "who will bemoan her?" THE BABYLONIANS =The Second Chaldean Empire.=--In the place of the fallen Assyrian empire there arose a new power--in ancient Chaldea. This has received the name Babylonian Empire or the Second Chaldean Empire. A Jewish prophet makes one say to Jehovah, "I raise u
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54  
55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

flayed

 
Empire
 

Assyrian

 
bodies
 

Assyrians

 

destroyed

 
massacres
 

Jewish

 

empire

 

century


Nineveh

 
prophet
 

conquered

 

chiefs

 

Chaldean

 

Second

 

Babylonia

 
tortured
 

ravaged

 

subjected


Palestine

 

Evidently

 

tortures

 

burnings

 

delight

 
Babylon
 
capture
 

regime

 
gorged
 

ancient


fallen
 

bemoan

 

BABYLONIANS

 

Chaldea

 
Jehovah
 

received

 

Babylonian

 

alliance

 
capital
 

Babylonians


repeated

 
exhausted
 

forever

 

bloody

 

prophets

 
revolted
 

trophies

 
presence
 

impaled

 

crucified