10 Days of Archaeology: Day Eight – Taylor Prism

On day eight in our series of 10 Days of Archaeology we examine the Taylor Prism or Sennacherib’s Prism. Epic Archaeology‘s superb infographics has another graphic for for this archaeological discovery. Here is day wight with the the Taylor Prism or The Annals of Sennacherib. Be sure to check out the other infographics at Epic Archaeology.

Discovered in 1830 in Nineveh, Iraq by Geoffrey Taylor, hence, commonly referred to as the Taylor Prism. The Annals of Sennacherib is congruent with the biblical texts of 2 Kings 18, 2 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 36. The prism recounts the military campaigns of Sennacherib against the Jewish king Hezekiah.

This six-sided hexagonal clay prism, commonly known as the Taylor Prism, was discovered among the ruins of Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire. It contains the Annals of Sennacherib himself, the Assyrian king who had besieged Jerusalem in 701 BC during the reign of king Hezekiah. On the prism Sennacherib boasts that he shut up “Hezekiah the Judahite” within Jerusalem his own royal city “like a caged bird.” This prism is among the three accounts discovered so far which have been left by the Assyrian monarch of his campaign against Israel and Judah. It is currently located at the British Museum.

Here is a short video discussing this discovery.