By Bruno Alves Barros

 

The Assyrian king Sennacherib’s conquest of Lachish in 701 BCE is famously depicted in the reliefs from Nineveh, now displayed in the British Museum. But Sennacherib’s written narratives of the conquest differ from that on the Lachish Reliefs. What was the purpose of both? Could what has been left out be more important than what is included?

Aerial view of Lachish. (http://www.southern.edu/lachish/)

 

During the first decade of his reign, the Judean king Hezekiah continued his father’s policy as a vassal of the Assyrians. But Hezekiah’s policy changed after the death of Sargon II in 705 BCE. He organized a rebellion of other vassals and sought Egyptian support. Rebellion proved to be a lethal mistake; Sargon’s son Sennacherib quickly crushed rebellions in Babylon and moved west, defeating the coalition organized by Hezekiah.

Sennacherib then moved then against the kingdom of Judah, which had been left standing alone. He besieged many cities including Lachish, which guarded the entrances to Jerusalem. Sennacherib’s literary account of this can be found in the Oriental Institute Prism, which boasts about the invasion of Judah:

Sennacherib prism. (Wikimedia Commons)

 

As for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not submit my yoke, 46 of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small cities in the neighborhood, which were without number, by leveling with battering rams and by bringing up siege engines, by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels and breaches, I besieged and took (those cities). 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle, and sheep, without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil. Himself, like a bird in a cage I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city.

This text paints a dramatic picture, but Sennacherib never conquered Jerusalem. According to the Biblical texts, after Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah offered prayers, “ That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there” (2 Kings 19: 35-36). This account is also slightly misleading; there is no evidence for mass Assyrian fatalities, and Hezekiah appears to have resumed his role as an Assyrian vassal.

But Sennacherib’s prism is not the only account created for the Assyrian king. Excavations conducted in the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh revealed its structure, plan, and monuments, along with reliefs displaying the king’s triumphs, including the siege of Lachish.

Southwest Palace floorplan. From D. Kertai, The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), Plate 17.

 

The siege of Lachish. (British Museum)

 

Sennacherib watches the fall of Lachish and a procession of Judean prisoners. Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC-BY-SA-4.0. (Wikimedia Commons)

 

A close look at the palace’s plan is important because each room of the palace is connected; central rooms give access to equally important smaller rooms. The sequence of reliefs creates a story.

In the Nineveh palace a room labeled Courtyard 19 introduces Room 36, a small inner chamber and the place where the reliefs of the battle of Lachish were found. But as scholar Ruth Jacoby noted, Lachish was not mentioned in Sennacherib’s texts of the campaign and, despite the reliefs being located off an important courtyard, the city’s identity in the reliefs  could not have been determined were it not for the inscription. Why the disparity between text and art?

The suite where the Lachish room was located seems to have been decorated almost exclusively with scenes of Sennacherib’s third campaign to the west. The Lachish Reliefs were also given unusual prominence by their architectural setting; access to Room 36 from Courtyard 19 was gained by passing through a series of three monumental portals, each decorated with a pair of bull colossi.

British Museum, Khorsabad Palace Reliefs and Assyrian Art leading to Lachish reliefs. (Wikimedia Commons)

 

These bulls descended in size from 18 feet (the outermost) to around 12 feet (the innermost). Assyrian art expert John Russell suggests that the “combination of central location and perspective effects makes the Lachish room the focal point of the entire suite, a visitor might justifiably conclude that the surrender of Lachish was the high point of the western campaign.”

Hunting, monumental construction, and war were central themes of Mesopotamian art from its very beginnings around 3500 BCE. In Sennacherib’s art, however, the dominant theme is his military campaigns and conquests; almost every room is decorated with battles and sieges in enemies’ cities.

One obvious reason is that the audience that came into contact with the reliefs in Sennacherib’s palace was much broader than that of the written narratives. The written narratives were intended for an exclusive group; as Russell points out this was a very small group of literate readers of Akkadian who understood the Babylonian rather than Assyrian dialect, and who also had the background to understand the complexities of the Assyrian royal titles and ideology, not to mention the time to study any given text.

A visitor to Sennacherib’s palace would not have the time or the knowledge to read the inscriptions and realize that the campaign in Judean territory was not very successful. The only group that could have access to the written narratives was the Assyrian administrative elite, most of whom had confidence in the king. The real dangers to Sennacherib were not his enemies in foreign countries, but in his own palace.

The visual narratives of his triumph reached a much broader audience including not only literary courtiers, but also non-literate Assyrians and foreigners, who may have recognized the battles against their own peoples and lands in the reliefs. The fall of Lachish at the hands of the Assyrians showed everyone what they knew already, that the Assyrians were invincible, and price to resist was the defeat. The remainder of the unsuccessful campaign in Judean territory did not have to necessarily be mentioned by Sennacherib’s artists.

The intensity of the battle at Lachish, the presence of the king and the city’s importance in the kingdom of Judah were selected to portray the Assyrian victory since the capital, Jerusalem, was not conquered. The scenes depicted in the reliefs communicated a message to the intended audience and show that even partial truth could be effective propaganda.

 

Bruno Alves Barros is has a M.A. in Religion from Andrews University.