Image Details

A.H. LAYARD, THE MONUMENTS OF NINEVEH, LONDON: J. MURRAY, 1849, PL . 62B; PUBLIC DOMAIN

SIEGE OF GEZER. In this relief from Tiglath-Pileser III’s royal palace in Nimrud, Assyrian soldiers are using a siege machine to scale a city’s walls. Identified by an incomplete cuneiform inscription as Gaz[ru], the city almost certainly represents Gezer. Although the original relief is now lost, this drawing made during Austen Henry Layard’s excavations at Nimrud in the 1840s captures the harrowing moments when the Israelite city fell under fierce Assyrian attack.