{"id":67520,"date":"2026-02-19T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblicalarchaeology.org\/?p=67520"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:24:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:24:48","slug":"sennacheribs-siege-of-lachish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblicalarchaeology.org\/daily\/biblical-sites-places\/biblical-archaeology-places\/sennacheribs-siege-of-lachish\/","title":{"rendered":"Sennacherib\u2019s Siege of Lachish"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A section of the Assyrian siege ramp as seen on the Lachish relief<\/a> from Sennacherib\u2019s palace at Nineveh. Credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)<\/a>, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps no event recorded in the Hebrew Bible is better supported by archaeology and external evidence than Sennacherib\u2019s siege of Lachish <\/a>in 701 B.C.E. The siege of Lachish is documented in multiple Assyrian texts and reliefs<\/a> and is also clearly visible in the site\u2019s archaeology. These various sources agree that Lachish eventually fell to the Assyrians, who built a massive siege ramp to reach the top of the city\u2019s walls. The same tactic would later be used by the Romans in their siege of Masada. A\u00a0study, published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology<\/i><\/a>, examines what went into the construction of the Lachish siege ramp and, in turn, argues for the accuracy of the biblical description of the event.<\/p>\n

\"Plan<\/a>

Plan and section drawings of the reconstructed siege ramp at Lachish, starting from the far end with a stone quarry nearby. Credit: Yosef Garfinkel et al. <\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

In investigating the Assyrian siege ramp at Lachish, the team examined several questions, specifically how the construction material for the ramp was collected and transported, how the ramp was built, how the ramp\u2019s builders were protected from the city\u2019s defenders, and how the ramp was made usable for Assyria\u2019s heavy siege engines. In answering these questions, the team relied on textual and archaeological information, as well as statistical and computer analyses of the efficiency of various ramp models.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Assyrian siege ramp, constructed with three million stones. Credit: Yosef Garfinkel <\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

The study showed that it would have taken hundreds of workers laboring 24 hours a day over three weeks to build the siege ramp. It was constructed from medium-sized stones, around 15 pounds each, that were quarried and gathered by the Assyrian army from a small hillside adjacent to the city. The stones were likely carried to the construction site by workers made up mostly of foreign prisoners taken by the Assyrians on their way to Judah. These workers would have been protected by large shields as they carried their stones to the site and dumped their stones to gradually build up the ramp. This is in line with the biblical description of the siege in 2 Kings 19:32, which mentions how the Assyrian army confronted the city with shields.<\/p>\n

The ramp was constructed from its back end forward, not from the ground up. Thus, the stones would be dropped over the edge of the ramp to the open area between the city\u2019s wall and the end of the ramp. This would in turn minimize the height advantage of the defenders on the wall. The study notes that this particular construction method was clearly known to the biblical authors, who used the Hebrew verb spk<\/i>, meaning \u201cto pour,\u201d to describe the building of the ramp (2 Kings 19:32). Thus, in the same way that liquids are poured, stones were poured over the end of the ramp in its construction<\/p>\n

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