Lest Ashurnasirpal II be seen as an aberration, hundreds of years later, another Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (r. 669–627 BCE), not content with defeating the Elamites in battle, described what he did to their long-dead ancestors, so that they would have no peace in the afterlife: “The tombs of their earlier and later kings, who did not fear Ashur and Ishtar, my lords, and who had plagued my fathers, I destroyed, I devastated, I exposed to the sun. Their bones, I carried off to Assyria. I laid restlessness upon their shades. I deprived them of food-offerings and of water.”*
Assyria didn’t just defeat you, they defeated your ancestors...
