We see on his bas-reliefs the unresisting enemy thrust through with the spear, the tongue torn from the mouth of the captive accused of blasphemy, the rebel king beheaded on the field of battle, and the prisoner brought to execution with the head of a friend or brother hung round his neck.

We see the scourgcrs preceding the king as his regular attendants, with their whips passed through their girdles; we behold the operation of flaying performed either upon living or dead men; we observe those who are about to be executed first struck on the face by the executioner's fist.

Altogether we seem to have evidence, not of mere severity, which may sometimes be a necessary or even a merciful policy, but of a barbarous cruelty, such as could not fail to harden and brutalize alike those who witnessed and those who inflicted it.

Nineveh, it is plain, still deserved the epithet of "a bloody city," or "a city of bloods." Asshur-bani-pal was harsh, vindictive, unsparing, careless of human suffering--nay, glorying in his shame, he not merely practised cruelties, but handed the record of them down to posterity by representing them in all their horrors upon his palace walls.
It has been generally supposed that Asshur-bani-pal died about B.C.

648 or 647, in which case he would have continued to the end of his life a prosperous and mighty king.