Images in War

It seems imagery, especially in forms of artistic work developed into playing heavy roles in Assyrian warfare. Bahrani makes it quite clear in the first chapter of Rituals of War that works of imagery in Assyria had grown to become equally the very person, god or idea it was supposed to simply represent. Eventually it became apparent that imagery was used to predict what would come to happen to that which it represented as well.
Do to the fact that statues and images were seen as literal replacements for kings and gods it became very common practice of Assyrian armies to loot or destroy images of their enemies’ kings and gods as they attacked their cities. Images of kings were even thought to embody the king after he had died. The destruction or abduction of images like these was recognized as a great enough offence to go to war.
As imagery was seen as reality it is no wonder that Assyrian art is realistic and many times in relatively great detail in the way things are portrayed. This however does not mean that events shown in narrative imagery are historically accurate. It would appear that many times images were created to show how the Assyrians wished or willed things to happen. This ties back into the idea that their images could have some control over the future. It is very clear that imagery was not only a large part of Assyrian culture, but a large part of Assyrian war tactics as well.