The Taylor Prism and Sennacherib Prism are clay prisms inscribed with the same text, the annals of the Assyrian king Sennacherib notable for describing his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC during the reign of king Hezekiah. This event is recorded in several books contained in Bible including Isaiah chapters 33 and 36; 2 Kings 18:17; 2 Chronicles 32:9. This event is also recorded by Herodotus.
The Sennacherib Prism is in the Oriental Institute of Chicago; the Taylor Prism is in the British Museum. Another Sennacherib Prism is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
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The prisms contain six paragraphs of cuneiform written Akkadian. They are hexagonal in shape, made of red baked clay, and stand 38.0 cm high by 14.0 cm wide, and were created during the reign of Sennacherib in 689 BC (Chicago) or 691 BC (London, Jerusalem).
It is one of three accounts discovered so far which have been left by Sennacherib of his campaign against the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah, giving a different perspective on these events from that of the Book of Kings in the Bible.
Some passages in the Old Testament agree with at least a few of the claims made on the prism. The Bible recounts a successful Assyrian attack on Samaria, as a result of which the population were deported, and later recounts that an attack on Lachish was ended by Hezekiah suing for peace, with Sennacherib demanding 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold, and Hezekiah giving him all the silver from his palace and from the Temple in Jerusalem, and the gold from doors and doorposts of the temple[1]. Compared to this, the Taylor Prism proclaims that 46 walled cities and innumerable smaller settlements were conquered by the Assyrians, with 200,150 people, and livestock, being deported, and the conquered territory being dispersed among the three kings of the Philistines instead of being given back. Additionally, the Prism says that Sennacherib’s siege resulted in Hezekiah being shut up in Jerusalem "like a caged bird", Hezekiah's mercenaries and 'Arabs' deserted him, and Hezekiah eventually bribed Sennacherib, having to give him antimony, jewels, ivory-inlaid furniture, his own daughters, harem, and musicians. It states that Hezekiah became a tributary ruler.
The Taylor prism comes from Nineveh, which was the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire under Sennacherib. The prism was discovered by Colonel Taylor in 1830 in the ruins of Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, now in northern Iraq. It was purchased from Colonel Taylor's widow in 1850 by the British Museum.[2] Another version, now in the Oriental Institute and known as the Sennacherib Prism, was purchased by James Henry Breasted from a Baghdad antiques dealer in 1919 for the Oriental Institute.[3] The Jerusalem prism was only published in 1990.[4]
The three known complete examples of this inscription are nearly identical, with only minor variants, although the dates on the prisms show that they were written sixteen months apart (the Taylor and Jerusalem Prisms in 691 BC and the Oriental Institute prism in 689 BC). There are also at least eight other fragmentary prisms preserving parts of this text, all in the British Museum, and most of them containing just a few lines.
The Chicago text was translated by Daniel David Luckenbill and the Akkadian text, along with a translation into English, is available in his book The Annals of Sennacherib (University of Chicago Press, 1924).[5]