Clay Prism of Sennacherib

This is a neat piece of physical evidence for the historicity of the Old Testament. This clay prism describes the siege of Jerusalem by King Sennacherib. The text says “I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage.” This matches the Biblical account of the siege where Sennacherib surrounded the city, but did not defeat Jerusalem.

2 Chr 32:1-23, 2 Kings 18:13-19:37 and Isaiah 36-37 describes this scene.

This object can be viewed at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. The British Museum has an object that is nearly identical on display.