Why was ancient Nineveh called “the city of bloodshed”?

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. It was a mighty city with magnificent palaces and temples, broad streets, and massive walls. The Hebrew prophet Nahum referred to it as “the city of bloodshed.”​—Nahum 3:1.

That was an apt description, for reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh attest to Assyrian cruelty. One depicts a torturer wrenching the tongue out of a prisoner who had been pinned to the ground. Inscriptions boast that captives were led by cords attached to hooks piercing their noses or lips. Captive officials were made to wear around their necks the severed heads of their kings, like grotesque necklaces.

Assyriologist Archibald Henry Sayce describes the barbarities that followed the capture of a town: “Pyramids of human heads marked the path of the conqueror; boys and girls were burned alive or reserved for a worse fate; men were impaled, flayed alive, blinded, or deprived of their hands and feet, of their ears and noses.”