(From Babylonian tablet, 4,000 years Before Christ)
THREE walls around the town of Tela when I came.
They expected everything of those walls;
Nobody in the town came out to kiss my feet.
I knocked the walls down, killed three thousand soldiers,
Took away cattle and sheep, took all the loot in sight,
And burned special captives.
Some of the soldiers—I cut off hands and feet.
Others—I cut off ears and fingers.
Some—I put out the eyes.
I made a pyramid of heads.
I strung heads on trees circling the town.
When I got through with it
There wasn’t much left of the town of Tela.
The town of Tela is the modern Viranšehir in southern Turkey.
The king was actually the Assyrian ruler Ashurnasirpal II (not III) and he lived in the 9th century BC.
The tablet (which is now in the British Museum in London) gives a lot of gruesome detail about what Ashurhasirpal did to the rebels of Tela:
"I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes and others I bound to stakes round the pillar. I cut the limbs off the officers who had rebelled. Many captives I burned with fire and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I consumed with fire. The rest of their warriors I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates."