HOW BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA WAGED WAR 



One might reconstruct the entire system of military tactics of Babylonian and Assyrian 

 kings from the records in has relief left by them on slabs of stone. In this picture we see 

 the method of attacking a city with battering rams and archers. The impaled prisoners in 

 the background show that Sherman's epigrammatic description of war fitted as well in 725 

 B. C. as it does in 1916 A. D. 



of Assyria to Laehish, saying-, I have of- 

 fended : return from me ; that which thou 

 puttest upon me I will bear. And the 

 King of Assyria appointed unto Heze- 

 kiah King of Judah three hundred tal- 

 ents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 

 And Hezekiah gave him all the silver 

 that was found in the honse of the Lord, 

 and in the treasures (if the king's house. 

 At that time did Hezekiah cut oft" the gold 

 from the doors of the temple of the Kord, 

 and from the pillars which Hezekiah 

 King of Judah had overlaid, and gave it 

 to the Kin? of Assyria." 



But while both records are at one as 

 to the straits to which Hezekiah was re- 

 duced, the Assyrian inscription makes no 

 claim with regard to the capture of Jeru- 

 salem : and its silence is quite as eloquent 

 as a direct statement that Jerusalem was 

 not captured would have been. 



The Book of Kings records the death 

 of the great enemy of Judah in these 

 terms (II Kings xix: 36-37): "So Sen- 

 nacherib King of Assyria departed, and 

 went and returned, and dwelt at Nine- 

 veh. And it came to pass as he was 

 worshipping in the house of Xisroch, his 



