> and it's terrifying how violent they are compared to modern standards

Not really, we just got better at it. Combat in the Ancient Near East consisted of bludgeoning your opponent with maces, clubs, and other blunt instruments. It took awhile to kill someone. We seem to equate "violence" with the duration spent killing someone (as though "dragging it out" is worse), but the end result between the millennia is the same: person A kills person B. We can just do it now in seconds with a single well-placed bullet instead of multiple minutes of agonized bludgeoning.