On Ashurbanipal’s Atrocities

"Nahum recites Ashurbanipal’s atrocities against Thebes in 3:8–10.

Assyrian records reveal gross atrocities on numerous occasions, but perhaps the most severe occurred when Ashurbanipal subdued an Elamite rebellion in 639 BC.


The influential assyriologist, H. W. F. Saggs (1984, 116) was so appalled by these actions that he denounced them millennia later: “
Earlier Assyrian kings had been harsh, yes, ruthless. Where there


“I am Ashurbanipal, great king,
 mighty king, king of the world, king of Assyria.”

was rebellion, they crushed it; where opposition, they destroyed it. But only Ashurbanipal put vindictiveness on display; only he slashed the face of a dead enemy, desecrated tombs of the dead he had not been able to punish when living, spared the lives of captive kings that he might humiliate them better living than dead. It is not the historian’s part to lay blame, but the historian must record; and malice as a driving force behind the later Ashurbanipal is a fact of history.”
AIG
Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea?
Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers.

Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity:

her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets:

and they cast lots for her honorable men,

and all her great men were bound in chains.

Nahum 3:8-10