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.”

[Illustration:  PLATE 112]