Sennacherib's Prism

Three Copies of the Same Boast

Assyrian kings kept annals, and the grandest were inscribed on six-sided baked-clay prisms roughly 37 to 38 centimetres tall, buried in the foundations of palaces. Three substantially complete copies of Sennacherib's survive, and not one of them was excavated: every one reached its museum through the antiquities market. The Taylor Prism, named for Colonel Robert Taylor, the British Resident at Baghdad who acquired it, was the first known; the British Museum bought it in 1855 from Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had himself bought it from Taylor's widow. The Chicago Prism was purchased in Baghdad in 1919 and is at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago. The third, the Jerusalem Prism, came through Sotheby's and was given to the Israel Museum from the Kevorkian Collection. The Taylor and Jerusalem prisms are dated to 691 BC and the Chicago Prism to 689 BC, and their accounts of the western campaign agree closely — which is itself informative, since this was an official version, copied and distributed.

The section that concerns the Bible describes the third campaign, in 701 BC, against the west. Sennacherib says he took forty-six walled cities of Judah along with countless smaller settlements, deported a very large number of people, stripped Hezekiah of territory and handed it to Philistine rulers, and confined Hezekiah himself "like a bird in a cage" in Jerusalem, his royal city, throwing up earthworks against it. He then lists the tribute Hezekiah sent after him to Nineveh.

Reading It Alongside 2 Kings 18-19

The overlap with Scripture is unusually detailed. 2 Kings 18:13 reports that Sennacherib took all the fortified cities of Judah; the prism counts forty-six. 2 Kings 18:14-16 reports Hezekiah paying tribute, stripping the temple doors to do it; the prism lists the tribute. The two accounts agree on thirty talents of gold. They differ on the silver — 2 Kings says three hundred talents, the prism eight hundred — and the usual explanations are a different talent standard or a scribe's inflation, neither of which is provable.

The most discussed feature of the prism is what is absent. Assyrian annals do not understate. When Sennacherib takes a city he says so, in detail, and burns it in the telling. Here he describes the siege works and the caged bird and then moves to the tribute, never claiming to have entered Jerusalem — which is exactly the outcome 2 Kings 19:32-36 describes, with the Assyrian army withdrawing without shooting an arrow into the city. That silence is a real point and worth making.

How Much Weight the Silence Carries

It carries some, and less than is usually claimed. The prism does not corroborate 2 Kings 19:35, the angel of the LORD striking the Assyrian camp; no Assyrian record would ever have said such a thing, and its absence is therefore not evidence either way. Nor is confinement without capture unusual: kings broke off sieges for supply, season, or a rebellion at home, and Sennacherib presents the tribute as the campaign's successful conclusion, which from his side it was. Herodotus preserves a separate and much later Egyptian story of Sennacherib's army being disabled by mice, which some historians take as a garbled memory of plague; it is late and secondhand and cannot bear much.

What can be said plainly is this: two independent accounts, one Judean and one Assyrian, agree that in 701 BC Sennacherib devastated Judah, besieged Hezekiah in Jerusalem, took heavy tribute — and did not take the city. They disagree about why. That is a substantial and unusual convergence, and it is stronger stated at that size than stretched. Sennacherib's own palace at Nineveh, incidentally, carried a room-sized carved relief of his siege of Lachish, the Judean city named in 2 Kings 18:14 and 2 Chronicles 32:9; the reliefs are in the British Museum and show the assault in extraordinary detail.

Scripture references

• 2 Kings 18:13-16 — Forty-six cities taken; Hezekiah's tribute, including the temple doors
• 2 Kings 18:17-37 — The Assyrian officers at the wall of Jerusalem
• 2 Kings 19:32-36 — The siege lifted; Sennacherib returns to Nineveh
• 2 Chronicles 32:1-23 — The Chronicler's account, naming the siege of Lachish
• Isaiah 36:1-37:38 — Isaiah's parallel narrative of the same campaign

Sources

• Holding institutionISAC, University of Chicago: 100 Highlights of the Collection — the Sennacherib Prism (A2793) — Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago · The museum's own label: "Baked clay", "Neo-Assyrian period, reign of Sennacherib, ca. 689 bc", "Purchased in Baghdad, 1919", object number A2793Supports: That the Chicago Prism was purchased rather than excavated, its date and its accession number
• Scholarship"Who Owns the Octagonal Prism of Sennacherib, BM 103000? A Dealer's Dispute" — Nadia Ait Said-Ghanem, in Iraq 85 (2023), 11-28, British Institute for the Study of Iraq / Cambridge University Press; open access under CC BY · On the Sennacherib prisms and the market they came through. States that in 1855 the Taylor Prism (BM 91032) "was purchased by the British Museum from Sir Henry Rawlinson", who "had himself bought it from Mrs Taylor, the widow of Colonel R. Taylor" — correcting the common claim that the Museum bought it from the widow directlySupports: The acquisition chain in section one, and that Taylor acquired rather than excavated the prism
• Primary textDaniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Oriental Institute Publications 2, 1924) — University of Chicago Oriental Institute · The standard edition and translation, freely downloadable; dates the Taylor Prism to the limmu of Bel-emuranni (691 BC) and the Oriental Institute Prism to the limmu of Gahilu (689 BC)Supports: The text of the third campaign, and the dates of the two prisms
• ReferenceBible Odyssey (SBL): Babylonian Accounts of the Invasion of Judah — Society of Biblical Literature

Further reading

• Bible Odyssey (SBL): Babylonian Accounts of the Invasion of Judah
• Wikipedia: Sennacherib's Annals