Bible Synapse
Sennacherib’s prisms
Inscription · 691–689 BC · Assyria and Babylon · also called Taylor Prism, Sennacherib Prism, Chicago Prism, Jerusalem Prism, Sennacherib's Annals
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 691–689 BC (the writing of the three prisms)
- Found
- Nineveh, Iraq (the Taylor Prism), 1855. Colonel Robert Taylor, the British Resident in Baghdad, acquired the Taylor Prism, probably at Nineveh in about 1830; when and where is not firmly recorded, though Layard thought it came from the Nebi Yunus mound. The British Museum bought it from his widow in 1855. The Chicago Prism was bought from a Baghdad dealer by James Henry Breasted after the First World War, and the Israel Museum bought the Jerusalem Prism at Sotheby’s in 1970.
- Now
- British Museum, London (BM 91032 (Taylor Prism))
- Passages
- 2 Kings 18:13–16, 2 Kings 19:35–36, 2 Chronicles 32:1, Isaiah 36:1
What it is
Six-sided baked-clay prisms, about 38 cm high, carrying the final edition of Sennacherib’s annals: eight campaigns, followed by the building of a new armoury at Nineveh. The Taylor Prism (691 BC), the Chicago Prism (689 BC) and the Jerusalem Prism (691 BC) carry almost the same text. In the third campaign Sennacherib says that Hezekiah of Judah would not submit, so he took 46 of his walled cities with ramps and battering rams, carried off 200,150 people and shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage”; Hezekiah later sent 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, his daughters and other treasure after him to Nineveh.
How it connects to the Bible
2 Kings 18–19, Isaiah 36–37 and 2 Chronicles 32 tell the same campaign from Judah’s side: Sennacherib took “all the fenced cities of Judah”, Hezekiah paid a heavy tribute, and Jerusalem did not fall. Kings gives the tribute as “three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold” (2 Kings 18:14). The prisms say nothing of the disaster to the Assyrian army told in 2 Kings 19:35–36; the campaign simply ends with Hezekiah’s payment.
What scholars debate
The silver figures differ (300 talents in Kings, 800 on the prisms), and the figure of 200,150 captives is widely thought to be exaggerated.