The army thus reinforced was at all events more efficient, if not actually more powerful, than formerly; the discipline maintained was as severe, the military spirit as keen, the equipment as perfect, and the tactics as skilful as in former times.  A knowledge of engineering had improved upon the former methods of taking towns by sapping and scaling, and though the number of military engines was as yet limited, the besiegers were well able, when occasion demanded, to improvise and make use of machines capable of demolishing even the strongest walls.*

* The battering-ram had already reached such a degree of perfection under Assur-nazir-pal, that it must have been invented some time before the execution of the first bas- reliefs on which we see it portrayed.  Its points of resemblance to the Greek battering-ram furnished Hoofer with one of his mam arguments for placing the monuments of Khorsabad and Koyunjik as late as the Persian or Parthian period.

The Assyrians were familiar with all the different kinds of battering-ram; the hand variety, which was merely a beam tipped with iron, worked by some score of men; the fixed ram, in which the beam was suspended from a scaffold and moved by means of ropes; and lastly, the movable ram, running on four or six wheels, which enabled it to be advanced or withdrawn at will.  The military engineers of the day allowed full rein to their fancy in the many curious shapes they gave to this latter engine; for example, they gave to the mass of bronze at its point the form of the head of an animal, and the whole engine took at times the form of a sow ready to root up with its snout the foundations of the enemy’s defences.  The scaffolding of the machine was usually protected by a carapace of green leather or some coarse woollen material stretched over it, which broke the force of blows from projectiles:  at times it had an additional arrangement in the shape of a cupola or turret in which archers were stationed to sweep the face of the wall opposite to the point of attack.

[Illustration:  012.jpg THE MOVABLE SOW MAKING A BREACH IN THE WALL OF A FORTRESS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs
     of the gate of Balawat.

The battering-rams were set up and placed in line at a short distance from the ramparts of the besieged town; the ground in front of them was then levelled and a regular causeway constructed, which was paved with bricks wherever the soil appeared to be lacking in firmness.  These preliminaries accomplished, the engines were pushed forward by relays of troops till they reached the required range.  The effort needed to set the ram in motion severely taxed the strength of those engaged in the work; for the size of the beam was enormous, and its iron point, or the square mass of metal at the end, was of no light weight.  The besieged did their best to cripple or, if possible, destroy the engine as it approached them.