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Sennacherib's Prism
Sennacherib's Prism
In summary of our reading from 2 Kings 18- 19, we saw that Hezekiah had rebelled against Sennacherib the king of Assyria. Sennacherib brought his army and marched through the land destroying many of the kings / cities that had also rebelled. He surrounded Jerusalem and sat up for a siege of the city. The siege was unsuccessful. He returned to Assyria with his army and died there.
We have discovered two stones or 'prisms' that tell the Assyrian version of the story. The first one is named after its discoverer and is called the Taylor Prism. This prism is now housed in the British Museum. Later a similar stone appeared with the same writing on it and is now called the Sennacherib Prism. This prism is in the Oriental Institute. (See pictures at the end of this article).
The text is written on different sides of the stones and thus arranged in 'columns'. Part of the text does mention this military jaunt into Judah against Hezekiah. It has been translated thus:
In my third campaign I marched against Hatti. Luli, king of Sidon, whom the terror-inspiring glamor of my lordship had overwhelmed, fled far overseas and perished.... As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to his strong cities, walled forts, and countless small villages, and conquered them by means of well-stamped earth-ramps and battering-rams brought near the walls with an attack by foot soldiers, using mines, breeches as well as trenches. I drove out 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered them slaves. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were his city's gate. *** Thus I reduced his country, but I still increased the tribute and the presents to me as overlord which I imposed upon him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually. Hezekiah himself, did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches inlaid with ivory, nimedu-chairs inlaid with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony-wood, boxwood and all kinds of valuable treasures, his own daughters and concubines.
I added the asterics because it would be at that point where you would have expected to read about the overthrow and destruction of the city and king Hezekiah. When kings wrote their own version of history they simply left out any bad events. Typical politicians even then, they would give their 'spin' to the event.
Of course there would be no mention of 185,000 of his army dying unexplained in one night causing them to not only stop the siege but to flee back to their homeland. The problem for bible students is simply that most 'scholars' on these things usually decide that the Bible version is unreliable. They often argue then from the very silence of the other record - it isn't mentioned therefore it didn't happen. The fact that it WAS mentioned in the Bible only proves (to them) that the Bible is wrong.
2 Chronicles 32:22 "So the Lord saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib king of Assyria and from the hand of all his enemies, and he provided for them on every side."
