Monday, December 22, 2025

Hezeqiah's cage

Those hoping to make a movie out of The Rescue of Jerusalem now have more grist: Slab 28 of Sennacherib's throneroom. This is a cartoon vision of the king's investing of a city... somewhere. It shares the architectural style of Lachish. Also here are images (or icons) of plants: tîn, khamr and rummân, which Arab poets know as south-Lebanese delicacies. (But not olives?)

Stephen Compton believes that the reliefs tell a story of Sennacherib's mostly-victorious march through that region - all of them, including the Lachish relief, which is very famous to "Biblical Archaeologists". Lachish' fall is handled in an antechamber, thus leading up to events in the throne room. That room by the way was a truly imperial production, like 17 x 7 squares on a D&D map. Largest room in the Iron Age, they say; as perhaps it should be. Since the plants are not destroyed, nor the walls, this is where the campaign ended: the seige of Jerusalem.

The cartoon has a stylised beardo waving a rectangular placard, presumably the Judah royal banner. Unfortunately the paint peeled off the rectangle so we don't know what the banner looked like. Also the beardo isn't much detailed. He is surely Hezeqiah himself but the XKCD stick-figure himof (if that's a word).

Compton further is tracking down the city which Assyrians called "Ushu". This may be Joshua's חֹסָה, MT-vocalised Hosa... except that the Greek translation has "Jasiph" here. Qumran raises no help past Joshua 17. The "Apocryphon" doesn't note it either. But whatever was "Ushu" (we may ignore Joshua) it was a mountainous bastion near Tyre. Compton plausibly sites it at one "Alexandroschene".

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