A peer-reviewed paper in the prestigious journal Near Eastern Archaeology reports the first-ever discoveries of ancient Assyrian military camps. Created circa 700 BC during military conquests across the Middle East, they mark the expansion of the Assyrian Empire, which became the prototype for the subsequent Persian, Greek, and Roman empires.
The initial discovery came from a scene carved into the stone walls of the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s palace commemorating his conquest of Lachish, a city to the south of Jerusalem. Matching the landscape in this image to features of the actual landscape (using early aerial photographs of Lachish prior to modern development) created a virtual map to the site of Sennacherib’s camp. This led to ruins similar in size and shape to the camp in Sennacherib’s relief. An archaeological survey of the site found no evidence of human habitation for 2600 years, followed by pottery sherds from the exact time of Sennacherib’s invasion of Lachish, after which it was again abandoned for centuries. Moreover, the ancient Arabic name for the ruins was Khirbet al Mudawwara, “The Ruins of the Camp of the Invading Ruler.”
The article has pictures of the stone panels in Sennacherib’s palace showing his military camp at Lachish, a 1940s photo of the landscape that matches the stone panels, 2,700-year-old ruins, and an early aerial photo of Jerusalem showing fortifications outside the city. These items all converge inexorably on the fact that the Bible accurately records the Assyrian siege, including the steps Hezekiah took to fortify Jerusalem.
One doesn’t have to believe in God to be awed by the Bible, whether as a profound moral treatise that provides an infallible guide for a thriving culture or as an accurate history covering the Ancient World up to the early years of the Roman Empire. This accuracy explains why the people in Gaza and the West Bank, whenever they stumble across ancient ruins, destroy them as quickly as possible, for they prove, irrefutably, the Jews’ ties to the land and the Muslim role as invader, destroyer, and colonizer of an ancient and continuous indigenous Jewish nation and culture.
As someone else pointed out, the Jews are the only nation which is living on the same land, speaking the same language, and worshipping the same God as they did 3,000 years ago.
If anyone here likes this sort of topic there is a print journal called Biblical Archaeology Review. I have a feeling it is just hanging on like most magazines and it serves a good purpose.
Father Mitch Pacwa (priest, gun right advocate and conservative Catholic radio and tv host) mentioned he subscribes, plus me. Never ran into anyone else.
They ran the story of that 82 year old scholar who was kidnapped by ISIS terrorists and tortured for days to reveal the locations of irreplaceable artifacts from mostly Christian and Jewish sites, and then killed. He had worked on uncovering historical data for over 50 years. The Muslims wanted to find them to destroy them with axes, hammers, explosives and jackhammers which they did.
Gone forever.
Why would anyone believe that earlier nonsense as there were no muslims until about 630 AD?
Very cool! Thanks for posting this.
>> Then Hezekiah worked resolutely
I love that wording. “Working resolutely” is a couple notches more intense than “working diligently”.
If they keep digging they’ll find 185,000 Assyrian skeletons.
Bfl
Bttt
Thanks, and Thanks be to God.
There are very few truly “ indigenous” populations in the world, history is constant conquering and re-conquering, but the closest thing to an indigenous population in the eastern Mediterranean is the Hebrew people. There are 26 layers of “civilizations” in Megiddo,
They're taking credit for something that was entirely a creation of the Israelites, the Tanakh.