The Nimrud Prism of Sargon II
Fragments of two clay prisms from Nimrud with a summary of Sargon II’s wars. The passage on Samaria adds that he resettled the city with people from other lands he had conquered and put a governor over it.
See the object at oracc.museum.upenn.edu ↗Introduction, sources and bibliography (RINAP 2, text no. 74) ↗
British excavators found the pieces of two clay prisms at Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, in 1952 and 1953. Both carried the same text, composed probably in 706 BC, and each fills gaps in the other. Much of the text is now known only from C. J. Gadd’s published copies, since several fragments could not be found in the Iraq Museum when the modern edition was prepared.
Column iv, lines 25–41, gives the fullest Assyrian account of the Fall of Samaria. The people of Samaria, Sargon II says, had agreed with a hostile king to withhold tribute and had offered battle. He fought them, counted the people as spoil together with their chariots and the gods they relied on, took two hundred chariots into his army, settled the rest in Assyria, rebuilt Samaria, brought in people from lands he had conquered and set a governor over them. The beginning of the passage is broken and its restoration is disputed, and the number of captives is damaged: it is read as 27,280 or 47,280.
Cited in
- 722/721 BC, estimated date