Bible Synapse
Nineveh Prism of Sargon II
Inscription · c. 711 BC · Assyria and Babylon · also called Sargon II’s Prisms, Sargon’s Prism A, Broken Prism of Sargon II
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- c. 711 BC (the writing of the prism’s text)
- Found
- Nineveh (Kuyunjik), near Mosul, Iraq. The fragments came to the British Museum from the 19th-century excavations at Nineveh. At least some were found in Sennacherib’s palace, but their exact find-spots were not recorded. Once thought to belong to two prisms (A and B), they are now thought to come from one.
- Now
- British Museum, London (K 1668b + DT 6 (the Ashdod passage) and other fragments)
- Passages
- Isaiah 20:1–6
What it is
An eight-sided clay prism of Sargon II, now in many fragments, which told his campaigns year by year down to 711 BC; it was probably made for work on a temple tower at Nineveh. In the Ashdod passage, Sargon removes King Azuri of Ashdod and puts his brother Ahi-Miti on the throne. The people drive Ahi-Miti out and make a commoner, Iamani, king; they dig deep moats and send lying messages to the kings of Philistia, Judah, Edom and Moab to turn them against Assyria, and carry gifts to Pharaoh, “a ruler who could not save them”. Sargon marches against the city and Iamani flees.
How it connects to the Bible
Isaiah 20 is dated to the year the Tartan came to Ashdod, “when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him”, the only place where the Bible names Sargon. Isaiah warned that those who looked to Egypt and Ethiopia for rescue would be put to shame. The prism shows that Judah was among the kingdoms urged to join Ashdod’s revolt and to trust in Pharaoh.
What scholars debate
Isaiah says the attack was led by the Tartan, Assyria’s commander-in-chief, while Sargon’s inscriptions present it as the king’s own campaign. Modern dates for the revolt and its end range from 713 to 711 BC.