Sennacherib decorated an entire room of his palace with the storming of one Judean city: siege ramps, battering rams, archers, families driven into exile, prisoners flayed and impaled, and the king himself enthroned reviewing the spoil. The Bible gives the fall of Lachish half a sentence. The excavated city mound tells the same story from below — the Assyrian ramp, a Judean counter-ramp, hundreds of arrowheads and sling stones, and mass graves.
- What it is
- Carved alabaster wall panels, roughly 27 metres of them, from Sennacherib's palace
- Date of artifact
- c. 700–681 BC
- Discovered
- Sennacherib's “Palace Without Rival,” Nineveh, Iraq, 1847 (Austen Henry Layard)
- Where it is now
- British Museum, London
- Related to
- The Assyrian siege and capture of Lachish, Judah's second city, in 701 BC
- Scripture
- 2 Kings 18:13–14 · 2 Chronicles 32:9
What this find showsThe 701 BC campaign happened essentially as all three witnesses — Assyrian art, the Bible, and the dig itself — independently describe; it is among the best-documented battles of the ancient world.
What it does not proveAssyrian palace art is imperial propaganda; its glorying tone, like its round numbers, serves the king. It confirms the event, not every claim either side made about it.
Sources & further reading