Accounts of the Campaign of Sennacherib

701 BC

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 Hebrew 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.

From The Hebrew Bible, 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:

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.