The following is the way one Assyrian king, Ashurnasirpal II, boasted of his treatment of those who opposed him:

“I built a pillar over against his city gate, and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, . . . and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled. . . . Many captives from among them I burned with fire, and many I took as living captives.” When archaeologists excavated Assyrian royal palaces, they found the walls decorated with depictions of horrendous treatment being meted out to captives.