For over two hundred years, the Assyrians terrorized the Near East in their day. The brutality of their conquests—they uprooted orchards, flayed leaders and stretched their skins across city walls, and displaced thousands of people amidst their decimations—was shocking even to the ancient world accustomed as it was to the savagery of war. Their audacious sadism ultimately played a role in the Assyrians' final destruction wrought upon them by a coalition of enemies wearied and terrified by centuries of atrocity. When Assyrian cities like Nimrud finally fell, the invaders returned the debt of cruelty which the Assyrians had incurred with a violence proportional to their own. Assyrian cities, government, the very people themselves were obliterated, never to reappear.

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