In this case the victim commonly knelt; his two hands were placed before him upon a block or cushion: behind him stood two executioners, one of whom held him by a cord round the neck, while the other, seizing his back hair in one hand, struck him a furious blow upon the head with a mace which he held in the other.

[PLATE CXI., Fig.

5.] It must have been rarely, if ever, that a second blow was needed.
Decapitation was less frequently practised.

The expression, indeed.

"I cut off their heads," is common in the Inscriptions but in most instances it evidently refers to the practice, already noticed, of collecting the heads of those who had fallen in battle.