Sennacherib's Annals
Sennacherib's Annals | |
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Sennacherib's Annals are the
The Taylor Prism is one of the earliest cuneiform artifacts analysed in modern Assyriology, having been found a few years before the modern deciphering of cuneiform.
The annals themselves are notable for describing Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem during the reign of king
Description and discovery
The prisms contain six paragraphs of
The Taylor prism is thought to have been found by Colonel Robert Taylor (1790–1852) in 1830 at
Another version of this text is found on what is known as the Sennacherib Prism, now in the Oriental Institute. It was purchased by
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 Oriental Institute prism in 689 BC). There are also at least eight other fragmentary prisms preserving parts of this text, all in the British Museum, and most of them containing just a few lines.
The Chicago text was translated by Daniel David Luckenbill and the Akkadian text, along with a translation into English, is available in his book The Annals of Sennacherib (University of Chicago Press, 1924).[9]
Significance
It is one of three accounts discovered so far which have been left by Sennacherib of his campaign against the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah, giving a different perspective on these events from that of the Book of Kings in the Bible.
Some passages in the Hebrew Bible (
"As for the king of Judah, Hezekiah, who had not submitted to my authority, I besieged and captured forty-six of his fortified cities, along with many smaller towns, taken in battle with my battering rams. ... I took as plunder 200,150 people, both small and great, male and female, along with a great number of animals including horses, mules, donkeys, camels, oxen, and sheep. As for Hezekiah, I shut him up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem. I then constructed a series of fortresses around him, and I did not allow anyone to come out of the city gates. His towns which I captured I gave to Mitinti, king of Ashdod; Padi, ruler of Ekron; and Silli-bel, king of Gaza
The tribute given by Hezekiah is then mentioned but in this account, nothing is said of Sennacherib capturing the city of Jerusalem.
References
- ^ "The Taylor Prism / The Sennacherib Prism / Library of Ashurbanipal". British Museum.
- ^ "Chapter 141". Archived from the original on 2016-02-26. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
- ^ Rawlinson, Henry Creswicke; Layard, Austen Henry (11 November 2017). "Outline of the history of Assyria: as collected from the inscriptions discovered by Austin Henry Layard, Esq. in the ruins of Nineveh". London : John W. Parker and Son, West Strand – via Internet Archive.
- ^ "British Museum". Archived from the original on 2015-11-07.
- ^ Mr. Taylor in Chaldaea, E. Sollberger, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 22, Special Number in Honour of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Seton Lloyd (1972), pp. 129–139
- ^ "Sennacherib Prism". www.kchanson.com.
- ^ "Hezekiah's Defeat: The Annals of Sennacherib". 22 January 2009.
- ^ Ling-Israel, P., "The Sennacherib Prism in the Israel Museum—Jerusalem," pp. 213–47 in Bar-Ilan: Studies in Assyriology Dedicated to Pinḥas Artzi (ed. J. Klein and A. Skaist; Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990).
- ^ Luckenbill, Daniel David (1924). The Annals of Sennacherib, Oriental Institute Publications 2 (PDF). University of Chicago Press.
- ^ 2 Kings 19:1–36
Further reading
- Dewar, Ben. 2017. "Rebellion, Sargon II's 'Punishment' and the Death of Aššur-Nādin-Šumi in the Inscriptions of Sennacherib". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 3, no. 1: 25–38.
- Frame, Grant, ed. 2011–2014. Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project (RINAP). Winona Lake, IL: Eisenbrauns. (Also see http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/corpus/)
- Geyer, John B. 1971. "2 Kings XVIII 14–16 and the Annals of Sennacherib". Vetus Testamentum 21, no. 5: 604–6.
- Grabbe, Lester L., ed. 2003. "Like a Bird in a Cage: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. 363 Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press.
- Ornan, Tally. 2007. "The Godlike Semblance of a King: The Case of Sennacherib's Rock Reliefs". In Ancient Near eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by her Students. Edited by Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman, 161–78. New York: Brill.
- Russell, John Malcolm. 1991. Sennacherib's Palace Without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Seitz, Christopher R. 1993. "Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib: A Reassessment". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 18, no. 58: 47–57.
- Ussishkin, David. 1982. The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology.
- Ussishkin, David. 2015. "Sennacherib's Campaign in Judah: The Conquest of Lachish". Journal for Semitics 24, no. 2: 719–58.
External links
- Sennacherib Prism – Luckenbill's translation as adapted by K. C. Hanson