The Assyrians had greatly developed the art of besieging cities. While their skilful long-range archers, often including the king himself, poured volleys of arrows at the defenders on the battlements, ponderous battering-rams were thudding at the wall, those working them being often completely protected by thick screens of metal or leather. At length, with a crash and a cloud of dust, part of the wall collapsed, the spearmen and archers swarmed through the breach, and before long the sacred war-standard of the Assyrians, the archer-god Ashur with his winged disc, was planted on the walls.

The Assyrians had greatly developed the art of besieging cities. While their skilful long-range archers,
often including the king himself, poured volleys of arrows at the defenders on the battlements, ponderous
battering-rams were thudding at the wall, those working them being often completely protected by thick
screens of metal or leather. At length, with a crash and a cloud of dust, part of the wall collapsed, the
spearmen and archers swarmed through the breach, and before long the sacred war-standard of the
Assyrians, the archer-god Ashur with his winged disc, was planted on the walls.