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Ancient History Sourcebook
Accounts of the Campaign of Sennacherib, 701 BCE
From The Sennacherib Prism
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. . .
From The Bible
2 Kings 18-19
In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went on an
expedition against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. Hezekiah, king of
Judah, sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: "I have done wrong. Leave
me, and I will pay whatever tribute you impose on me." The king of Assyria exacted
three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold from Hezekiah, king of Judah.
Hezekiah paid him all the funds there were in the temple of the Lord and in the palace
treasuries...That night the angel of the Lord went forth and struck down 185,000 men in
the Assyrian camp. Early the next morning, there they were, all the corpses of the dead.
So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, broke camp and went back home to Nineveh. When he was
worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adram-melech and Sharezer slew him
with the sword and fled into the land of Ararat.
2 Chronicles 32
But after he had proved his [Hezekiah's] fidelity by such deeds, Sennacherib, king of
Assyria, came. He invaded Judah, besieged the fortified cities, and proposed to take them
by storm. . . .His officials said still more against the Lord God and against his servant
Hezekiah, for he had written letters to deride the Lord, the God of Israel. . . They spoke
of the God of Israel as though he were one of the gods of the other peoples of the earth,
a work of human hands. But because of this, King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, son of
Amos, prayed and called out to him. Then the Lord sent an angel, who destroyed every
valiant warrior, leader and commander in the camp of the Assyrian king, so that he had to
return shamefaced to his own country. And when he entered the temple of his own god, some
of his own offspring struck him down there with the sword.
Source:
From:
Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources, (Milwaukee: University
Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. I: The Ancient World;
The Bible (Douai-Rheims Version), (Baltimore: John Murphy Co., 1914).
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg
has modernized the text.
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