uring the earlier periods of Babylonian-Assyrian history, simplicity
was the rule, and the objects placed in the tombs were more carefully
chosen with reference to the needs of the dead and the career that he
led while living, while the tendency in later times was away from the
religious beliefs that gave rise to the funeral customs, and in the
direction of luxury and display. This development, however, is
independent of _proper_ burial, upon which, as we have already had
occasion to see, great stress was at all times laid. The greatest
misfortune that could happen to a dead person was for his body to remain
overground, or to be removed from the tomb and exposed to the light of
day. In the early monument of Babylonian art,--the 'stele of
vultures,'[1270]--already referred to, the dead foes are punished by
being stripped of their clothing and exposed to the attack of vultures,
who are seen carrying off human heads, legs, and arms. To emphasize the
contrast, the king's soldiers are portrayed as being buried in
symmetrical rows, the head of each body being covered by the feet of the
body in the row above. When the Babylonian and Assyrian kings wish to
curse the one who might venture to destroy the monuments set up by them,
they know of nothing stronger than to express the hope

That his body may be cast aside,
No grave be his lot.[1271]

The kings punished their enemies by leaving their bodies to rot in the
sun, or they exposed them on poles as a warning to rebels. Ashurbanabal
on one occasion speaks of having scattered the corpses of the enemy's
host 'like thorns and thistles' over the battlefield.[1272] The corpses
of the Babylonians who had aided in the rebellion against the king were
given 'to dogs, swine, to the birds of heaven, to the fish of the sea'
as food.[1273] The same king takes pleasure in relating that he
destroyed the graves of Elamitic kings and dragged the bodies from their
resting-place[1274] to Assyria. Their shades, he adds, were thus
unprotected. No food could be tendered them and no sacrifices offered in
their honor. Sennacherib, after he has crushed a rebellion that broke
out in Babylonia, takes a terrible revenge upon the instigator of the
opposition, Mardukbaliddin, by removing the bodies of the latter's
ancestors from the vaults wherein they were deposited. The bones of an
enemy are enumerated by Ashurbanabal among the spoil secured by
him.[1275] The mutilation of the dead body was also a te