The Lachish Reliefs
Carved stone panels from Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh showing the Assyrian siege and capture of Lachish in Judah in 701 BC. A caption over the enthroned king names the city and says that its spoil passed before him.
See the object at britishmuseum.org ↗Text and translation of the caption above the king (RINAP 3, Sennacherib no. 66) ↗
The panels are gypsum wall slabs from Room XXXVI of the South-West Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, carved in low relief in the years after the campaign of 701 BC. They show the assault on a fortified city and its aftermath. On one panel the king sits on a throne before his tent while prisoners are brought to him. A cuneiform caption of four lines over the scene says that Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, sat on his throne while the spoil of Lachish passed before him.
The reliefs are the Assyrian court’s own picture of an event that the Bible mentions only in passing (2 Kings 18:14, 17) (2 Chronicles 32:9). Sennacherib’s written annals do not name Lachish; the caption does. See Hezekiah Withstands Sennacherib.
Cited in
- 701 BC, firm date