Image Details

Erich Lessing

Giving commands from a makeshift throne, the Assyrian king Sennacherib watches his troops destroy the town of Lachish, about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, in 701 B.C. This carving, now in the British Museum, is one of several records of Sennacherib’s western campaign—in which Jerusalem was besieged, but not captured. The other sources are the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles, the Greek historian Herodotus, and Assyrian inscriptions on clay tablets and on the colossal human-headed bulls guarding Sennacherib’s palace (compare with photo of the “Taylor prism”).