Sennacherib besieges Jerusalem
The one siege where the Assyrian and biblical accounts both survive and disagree.
- When
- Known to
- ± 2 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
In 701 BCE Sennacherib devastates Judah, taking Lachish — a siege he commemorated in a vast relief series in his palace — and shuts Hezekiah up in Jerusalem, in his words, like a bird in a cage. He does not say he took the city. The biblical account says an angel destroyed his army overnight. Hezekiah's tunnel, cut 533 metres through rock to secure the city's water supply and bearing a contemporary inscription describing the two teams meeting, was dug for this siege and still stands.