There were various means for assaulting a hostile town. Sometimes scaling-ladders were used, sometimes the walls were undermined with crowbars and pickaxes; sometimes a battering-ram was employed armed with one or two spear-like projections; sometimes fire was applied to the enemy's gates. Other engines are mentioned in the inscriptions, but as they have not been found depicted on the monuments it is difficult to identify them. [Illustration: SIEGE OF A CITY.] The barbarities which followed the capture of a town would be almost incredible, were they not a subject of boast in the inscriptions which record them. Assur-natsir-pal's cruelties were especially revolting. Pyramids of human heads marked the path of the conqueror; boys and girls were burned alive or reserved for a worse fate; men were impaled, flayed alive, blinded, or deprived of their hands and feet, of their ears and noses, while the women and children were carried into slavery, the captured city plundered and reduced to ashes, and the trees in its neighbourhood cut down. During the second Assyrian Empire warfare was a little more humane, but the most horrible tortures were still exercised upon the vanquished. How deeply-seated was the thirst for blood and vengeance on an enemy is exemplified in a bas-relief which represents Assur-bani-pal and his queen feasting in their garden while the head of the conquered Elamite king hangs from a tree above. The Assyrians made use of chairs, tables, and couches. A piece of sculpture from Khorsabad introduces us to a scene in which the priests of the king are seated, two on a chair on either side of a four-legged table. Their sandals are removed, as was the custom among the Greeks when eating. In the luxurious days of Assur-bani-pal the couch seems to have partially taken the place of the chair, since in the scene alluded to above the king is depicted reclining, though the queen sits in a chair by his side. The number of different kinds of food mentioned in the inscriptions seems to imply that the Assyrians were fond of good living. The common people, it is true, lived mostly on bread, fruit, and vegetables; but the monuments show us soldiers engaged in slaughtering and cooking oxen and sheep. Wine was the usual beverage at a banquet, and the Assyrians appear to have resembled the Persians in their indulgence in it. Various sorts of wine are enumerated in the inscriptions, most of which were imported from abroad. Among the most highly prized was the wine of Khilbun or Helbon, which is mentioned in Ezek. xxvii. 18, and was grown near Damascus at a village still called Halbûn. Besides grape-wine, palm-wine, made from dates, was brought from Babylon, and beer, milk, cream, butter or ghee, and oil, were all much used. At a feast the wine was ladled out of a large vase into cups, which were then presented to the guests.