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TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

“NONE WAS LEFT.” Israel’s capital city of Samaria was conquered by the Assyrian king Sargon II in 720 BCE. Rather than destroying the city, the Assyrians turned Samaria into the region’s administrative capital, governed from its acropolis. Confirming biblical claims of mass Israelite deportations, Assyrian sources record displacement of the local population and resettling of the land with deportees from eastern parts of the Assyrian Empire. The Nimrud Prism, which is a chronicle of Sargon II’s expeditions, has the king boasting: “I brought into it people from countries conquered by my hand. I appointed my eunuch as governor over them. And I counted them as Assyrians.” Recounting the Northern Kingdom’s demise years later, the writer of 2 Kings 17:18 proclaimed that afterward, “none was left but the tribe of Judah alone.”