robably 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 we