Sennacherib's Annals are the

annals Annals (, from , "year") are a concise history, historical record in which events are arranged chronology, chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record. Scope The nature of the distinction betw ...

Sennacherib Sennacherib ( or , meaning "Sin (mythology), Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705BC until his assassination in 681BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous A ...

, emperor of the

Neo-Assyrian Empire The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus, Nort ...

. They are found inscribed on several artifacts, and the final versions were found in three clay prisms inscribed with the same text: the Taylor Prism is in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, the ISAC or Chicago Prism in the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures and the Jerusalem Prism is in the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. The Taylor Prism is one of the earliest cuneiform artifacts analysed in modern

Assyriology Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The fie ...

. It was found a few years before the modern deciphering of

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

. The annals are notable for describing Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem during the reign of king

Hezekiah Hezekiah (; ), or Ezekias (born , sole ruler ), was the son of Ahaz and the thirteenth king of Kingdom of Judah, Judah according to the Hebrew Bible.Stephen L Harris, Harris, Stephen L., ''Understanding the Bible''. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. "G ...

. This event is recorded in several books contained in the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

including Isaiah 36 and 37; 2 Kings 18:17; and 2 Chronicles 32:9. The invasion is mentioned by

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, who does not refer to the

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

and says the invasion ended at

Pelusium Pelusium (Ancient Egyptian: ; /, romanized: , or , romanized: ; ; ; ; ) was an important city in the eastern extremes of Egypt's Nile Delta, to the southeast of the modern Port Said. It became a Roman provincial capital and Metropolitan arc ...

on the edge of the

Nile Delta The Nile Delta (, or simply , ) is the River delta, delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's larger deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the eas ...

Description and discovery

The prisms contain six paragraphs of Akkadian, written in cuneiform. They are hexagonal, made of red baked clay, and stand 38.0 cm high by 14.0 cm wide. They were created during the reign of Sennacherib in 689 BC (Chicago) or 691 BC (London, Jerusalem). The Taylor prism is thought to have been found by Colonel Robert Taylor (1790–1852) in 1830 at

Nineveh Nineveh ( ; , ''URUNI.NU.A, Ninua''; , ''Nīnəwē''; , ''Nīnawā''; , ''Nīnwē''), was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul (itself built out of the Assyrian town of Mepsila) in northern ...

, which was the ancient capital of the

under Sennacherib, before its initial excavation by Botta and Layard more than a decade later. Although the prism remained in

Ottoman Iraq Ottoman Iraq () refers to the period of the history of Mesopotamia, Iraq when the region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (1534–1920; with an interlude from 1704 to 1831 From Independence under the Mamluk dynasty (Iraq), Mamluk state of Iraq).Bef ...

until 1846, in 1835 a paper squeeze was made by the 25-year-old Henry Rawlinson, and a plaster cast was taken by Pierre-Victorien Lottin in c.1845. The original was later thought to have been lost, until it was purchased from Colonel Taylor's widow in 1855 by the British Museum. (Colonel Taylor may have been the father of John George Taylor, who, himself, became a noted Assyrian explorer and archaeologist.) Taylor Prism-3

Another version of this text is found on what is known as the Sennacherib Prism, which is now in the ISAC. It was purchased by

James Henry Breasted James Henry Breasted (; August 27, 1865 – December 2, 1935) was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894 – the first American to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology – ...

from a Baghdad antiques dealer in 1919 for the Institute. The Jerusalem prism was acquired by the Israel Museum at a Sotheby's auction in 1970. It was only published in 1990. The three known complete examples of this inscription are nearly identical, with only minor variants, although the dates on the prisms show that they were written sixteen months apart (the Taylor and Jerusalem Prisms in 691 BC and the ISAC prism in 689 BC). At least eight other fragmentary prisms, all in the British Museum, preserve parts of this text, most of them containing just a few lines. The Chicago text was translated by

Daniel David Luckenbill Daniel David Luckenbill ( Hamburg, Pennsylvania 21 June 1881 - London, 5 June 1927) was an American assyriologist and professor at the University of Chicago. Publications Complete bibliography * John A. Maynard: ''In Memoriam: A Bibliography of ...

and the Akkadian text, along with a translation into English, is available in his book ''The Annals of Sennacherib'' (University of Chicago Press, 1924).

Significance

It is one of three accounts discovered so far which have been left by Sennacherib of his campaign against the Kingdom of Israel-Samaria and the Kingdom of Judah, giving a different perspective on these events from that of the

Books of Kings The Book of Kings (, ''Sefer (Hebrew), Sēfer Malik, Məlāḵīm'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Is ...

in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' 2 Kings 18– 19 agree with at least a few of the claims made on the prism. The Hebrew Bible recounts a successful Assyrian attack on Israel-Samaria, as a result of which the population was deported, and later recounts that an attack on

Lachish Lachish (; ; ) was an ancient Canaanite and later Israelite city in the Shephelah ("lowlands of Judea") region of Canaan on the south bank of the Lakhish River mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. The current '' tell'' by that name, kn ...

was ended by

suing for peace, with Sennacherib demanding 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. Hezekiah gave him all the silver from his palace and from the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Accord ...

and the gold from doors and doorposts of the Temple. Compared to this, the Taylor Prism proclaims that 46 walled cities and innumerable smaller settlements were conquered by the Assyrians, with 200,150 people, and livestock, being deported. The conquered territory was dispersed among the three kings of the

Philistines Philistines (; LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philistines origi ...

instead of being given back. Additionally, the Prism says that Sennacherib’s siege resulted in Hezekiah being shut up in Jerusalem "like a caged bird", Hezekiah's mercenaries and 'Arabs' deserting him, and Hezekiah eventually buying off Sennacherib, having to give him

antimony Antimony is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Sb () and atomic number 51. A lustrous grey metal or metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient t ...

, jewels,

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and Tooth, teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mamm ...

- inlaid furniture, his own daughters,

harem A harem is a domestic space that is reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic Domestic worker, servants, and other un ...

, and musicians. It states that Hezekiah became a tributary ruler.The tribute given by Hezekiah is then mentioned but in this account, nothing is said of Sennacherib capturing the city of Jerusalem.

References

External links

Sennacherib Prism
– Luckenbill's translation as adapted by K. C. Hanson {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor Prism 7th-century BC inscriptions 1830 archaeological discoveries Assyrian inscriptions Archaeological artifacts Akkadian literature Ancient Near and Middle East clay objects Collection of the Israel Museum Middle Eastern objects in the British Museum Sennacherib Nineveh

Description and discovery

Significance

References

Further reading

External links