Artifact
Sennacherib's Prism (Taylor Prism)
c. 701 BC
Corroborates the biblical account of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem from the Assyrian perspective, with Sennacherib's own record inadvertently confirming his failure to take the city. It is one of the most striking cases where an enemy king's boast actually supports the biblical narrative of divine deliverance.
About this artifact
Discovered in 1830 by British Colonel Robert Taylor at the site of ancient Nineveh (modern Mosul, Iraq), the six-sided clay prism records the military campaigns of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, dating to 701 BC. In his account of the campaign against Judah, Sennacherib boasts of conquering 46 fortified cities and shutting up King Hezekiah 'like a caged bird' in Jerusalem — but conspicuously never claims to have captured the city itself. This remarkable omission perfectly corroborates the biblical account in 2 Kings 18-19 and Isaiah 36-37, which records that the angel of the LORD struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, forcing Sennacherib to withdraw. The prism is now in the British Museum.
On the timeline
Sennacherib's own account, written around 701 BC, of his campaign against Judah — he boasts of shutting Hezekiah inside Jerusalem like a bird in a cage, yet never claims to have taken the city.
