Summary: Long-lost Assyrian camp recently found supports epic Biblical account of a Jerusalem battle that ended with angelic intervention.
And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. – 2 Kings 19:35 (ESV)
Assyrian Military Camp Uncovered
A newly discovered archaeological site in Israel may provide evidence of the miraculous account given in three separate books of the Bible, where an angel of the Lord wiped out 185,000 Assyrian soldiers besieging Jerusalem in answer to King Hezekiah’s prayer.
Stephen Compton, an independent scholar specializing in Near Eastern archaeology, used a modern mapping technique to locate ancient Assyrian military camps from 700 BC. The discoveries revealed a string of campaign sites for the invasion of Judah that led right to the city of Jerusalem where a confrontation of Biblical proportions took place.
If archaeological investigation confirms these findings, they will support the Biblical texts of 2 Kings 19:35, Isaiah 37:36-38 and 2 Chronicles 32:21, as well as other Assyrian texts and Greek histories. Compton detailed his finds in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology and shared with Fox News Digital the historical significance.
Assyrian History
The Assyrian Empire dominated the ancient Near East throughout much of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, becoming the strongest military power in the world. At its height, Assyria spread out as far as today’s Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The capital city, Nineveh, was one of the greatest cities of ancient times. Archaeology has confirmed what the prophet said in Jonah 3:3; the area of the city was so massive that it took three days to walk around it.
Assyria was a constant threat to Israel. Beginning in 733 BC, under King Tiglath-Pileser III, the Bible records how God used Assyria to punish the tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel for following other gods (1 Chronicles 5:23-26; 2 Kings 15:29).
Later, 2 Kings 18:9-12 recounts how the Assyrian King Shalmaneser besieged Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. It fell three years later in 721 BC, ending the Northern Kingdom and fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 10:5-19, that Assyria would be used for God’s judgment against the wayward Israelites. This was during the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign in Judah.
Assyrian King Sennacherib ruled from 705 – 681 BC. He carried out a campaign to control all routes across the Syrian Desert that led to the Mediterranean Sea. In 701 BC, the 14th year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib set his sights on Judah, conquering 46 of its fortified cities (Isaiah 36:1). Miraculously, Jerusalem was spared.
Searching for Long-Lost Camps
Stephen Compton set out to look for archaeological remains of King Sennacherib’s military camps throughout Israel. He began his investigation with Lachish, a city located 42 miles southwest of Jerusalem. “One of the important cities that [Sennacherib] conquered, which is mentioned in the Bible as well as in Assyrian documents, is Lachish,” said Compton.
Sennecherib’s southwest palace at Nineveh, now the location of modern-day Mosul, Iraq was discovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1847. The palace contained almost two miles of stone hallways carved with reliefs. A detailed battle scene commemorating Sennecherib’s conquest of Lachish was among the events recorded on the walls.
“On the wall of Sennacherib’s palace he had a relief depicting, in stone carving, the conquest of the city of Lachish,” explained Compton. “On one side [of the carving] was his military camp [which was] a large oval.” The carvings showed how the Assyrian military bases were laid out around the city.
Using early aerial photographs of Lachish from 1910, that show the area before modern development, Compton was able to match the landscape as depicted on the palace walls to features of the actual area located in Lachish. “Each [military base] was a round site, a little over a mile north of the respective old city walls.”
Compton explained: “We knew [the military base] was an oval. What I did was, I took the image of the relief and matched it up with recognizable features in the landscape with the actual landscape and overlaid the two. I used earlier photographs of the landscape from World War II, right before major changes were made.”
Mudawwara – “The Camp of the Invading Rulers”
On early maps, this location is labeled as Khirbet al Mudawwara, meaning Ruins of Mudawwara, Compton explained. The word “mudawwara” in Medieval Arabic denotes “a large tent of rulers and great men, used especially when the army was on the march.”
Compton checked Khirbet al Mudawwara’s existing archaeological records which further convinced him that this was the area of Sennacherib’s siege camp. Archaeological findings of pottery sherds demonstrated a long period of inactivity, followed by “significant activity” about the time of Sennacherib’s invasion, and then again centuries of inactivity.
Using Assyrian chronicles, Compton searched for where else he might find Sennacherib’s camps. By looking for other map sites that were referred to as mudawwara, Compton was able to trace the Assyrian army’s route of conquest. He found that Sennacherib’s entry point into Judah was most likely Azekah, near today’s Beit Shemesh. From there, Sennacherib besieged the fortified cities of Judah.
As Jerusalem watched the Assyrians taking over city after city in Judah, King Hezekiah decided to build the 1,750-foot-long tunnel under Jerusalem. His purpose was to connect the Gihon Spring with the Siloam Pool, in an effort to block the water source from the invading Assyrians and direct it into the city.
Following the Trail
According to Compton, Lachish was the southernmost city conquered by Sennacherib. The Assyrians lingered at Lachish while corresponding with King Hezekiah in Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:14). Sennacherib moved from there to Libnah. Using the location of another mudawwara and other evidence, Compton correlated Libnah with today’s Israeli National Park of Lavnin.
The next encampment, southwest of Beit Shemesh, is slightly different from the other ones because it is not located on top of its hill. Most likely the hill was too rugged, according to Compton. “This mudawwara appears to correspond to an elongated plateau running north–south along the side of the hill, its perimeter lined with the remains of a dry-stone wall similar to that of the Lachish mudawwara,” he wrote in his article.
From Beit Shemesh, surprisingly, the trail of camps continues north. Compton’s research proposes that instead of following a direct path and approaching Jerusalem from the south, Sennacherib proceeded north, conquering several other cities before turning around and heading back south toward Jerusalem. Perhaps, his strategy was to surprise King Hezekiah as he would have been expecting an attack to come from the south.
Thus, Compton looked north of Jerusalem for the siege camp. “Looking farther north, the earliest aerial photographs of Jerusalem … show a structure similar to the Lachish mudawwara, with the remains of substantial oval walls around both the base and the summit. The lower wall appears to have been far more substantial on the side facing Jerusalem, consistent with an adversarial relationship. The [1945] Survey of Palestine Jerusalem map labeled this Jebel el Mudawwara, “Mountain of the Mudawwara,” wrote Compton.
The ruins at Jebel el Mudawwara were previously thought to be from the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the 1st century AD. However, “Roman military camps were always rectangular, whereas this was oval, the characteristic shape of Assyrian camps,” said Compton. Moreover, the size and structure of these ruins are very similar to the ones near Lachish, suggesting that these are indeed the remains of Sennacherib’s camp.
The City of Nob Connected to Jebel el Mudawwara
Another supporting factor of Compton’s theory comes from the Biblical record. Isaiah 10 records the terrifying advancement of the Assyrian army and that they encamped at Nob.
- He has come to Aiath; he has passed through Migron;
- at Michmash he stores his baggage.
- They have crossed over the pass; at Geba they lodge for the night.
- Ramah trembles; Gibeah of Saul has fled.
- Cry aloud, O daughter of Gallim!
- Give attention, O Laishah! O poor Anathoth!
- Madmenah is in flight; the inhabitants of Gebim flee for safety.
- This very day he will halt at Nob.
- He will shake his fist at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.
- – Isaiah 10:28-32
According to Nehemiah, Nob was a town north of Jerusalem, part of the tribe of Benjamin (Neh. 11:31-32). Before now, the exact location of Nob was an enigma to archeologists. Because of his research, Compton now identifies Jebel el Mudawwara with Nob.
The priestly city of Nob held the tabernacle before the temple was constructed. According to 1 Samuel 21-22, the priests at Nob helped David as he fled from King Saul. Because of this, Saul had every man, woman, child, and animal in Nob killed (1 Sam. 22:19). The city was not mentioned again for some 300 years, until the Assyrians camped there to taunt King Hezekiah in Jerusalem.
Today, Jebel el Mudawwara is known as the Ammunition Hill Heritage Site. It received its name during the British Mandate, when the British built an ammunition bunker at the site. During the Independence War of 1948, the hill was conquered by the Jordanians. Then, in the Six Day War of 1967, it was taken by Israeli paratroopers and reunited with the rest of Jerusalem. The site is now a memorial and museum.
Jerusalem is Miraculously Spared
Sennacherib’s conquering campaign in Judah was finally halted when he was not able to capture Jerusalem. According to 2 Kings 19, he was thwarted through an amazing miracle, because King Hezzekiah prayed desperately to God for help.
- Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, Lord, and hear; open your eyes, Lord, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God. It is true, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands. Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Lord, are God.” – 2 Kings 19:15-19
God listened and sent an angel to the Assyrian encampment.
- 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
Sennacherib was finally stopped by the power of God through a righteous king’s prayer. And Compton may have discovered the very site of this astounding miracle.
There is nothing at the site to prove a supernatural occurrence. However, the fact that a fortified military camp dating to the right time period was found in that location does show that Sennacherib’s army was in the area and apparently ready to sack Jerusalem 2,700 years ago, before God’s agents intervened and doomed the siege to failure.
King Hezekiah withstood the siege but still ended up paying enormous tribute to the Assyrians. Sennacherib boasted of his accomplishments and tribute in carvings and writings, but he was unable to conquer Judah’s capital. Instead of Jerusalem’s defeat engraved on his palace walls, he recorded the second most important city in Judah he destroyed, which was Lachish.
Sennacherib’s life ended in Nineveh when he was murdered by his own sons as he worshiped his god Nisroch (Isaiah 37:38). The Assyrian Empire came to an end when Nineveh was destroyed by the Medes from the Iranian Plateau and the Chaldeans of Babylon, in 612 BC. The city never rose again, and its location was long forgotten until archaeologists found its remains in 1849.
The fact that Nineveh never rose again after its defeat also fits the warning of the Bible’s prophet Nahum. Nahum wrote that God would make a complete end of Nineveh’s place and that trouble from them would not rise up a second time (Nahum 1:8-9). He also wrote that its name would no more be perpetuated and it would be “utterly cut off” (Nahum 1:14-15).
Conclusion
The methods Compton used to find Sennacherib’s campsite have led to the discovery of other Assyrian military camps. “In some cases, it has also been possible to use the newly discovered camps to locate the sites of ancient cities that were known to have been besieged by the Assyrians but whose locations were unknown or uncertain,” said Compton.
“It’s exciting to have found the spot [of Sennacherib’s camp at Jerusalem], and I hope that we’ll soon see archaeological excavations there that can give us more information about the site,” said Compton.
The memorialized carved walls of the siege at Lachish from Sennacherib’s palace can be seen now at the British Museum. These exciting discoveries that provide powerful evidence for Biblical accounts encourage us to Keep Thinking!
TOP PHOTO: Fall of Lachish, King Sennacherib reviews Judean prisoners. Wall relief from the South-West Palace at Nineveh (modern-day Ninawa Governorate, Iraq), Mesopotamia. Neo-Assyrian period, 700-692 BC. British Museum, London. (credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
