How An Empire Was Lost in a Day: The Woes of Sennacherib

I am starting a new column looking back at various world powers that lost their entire empires that were built up over hundreds of years in one day. The reason being is that in society, many people think that the USA is invincible; however, 9/11 proved otherwise. The first empire that I will begin with is the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire rose to power around 900 BC and was destroyed around 600 BC. However, one incident demolished the entire Assyrian army in one day around 700 BC. Sennacherib was the emporer at this time, and he and his army were besieging Jerusalem. In ancient times, an army would surround a city so that the city would not have any access to the rivers and streams that were outside of the city. Thus, the defenders of the city would become weak when the water and the food would run out. However, the king of Jerusalem at the time, Hezekiah, had underground caverns built that funnelled water underground into the city. So while the Assyrians were waiting for the people of Jerusalem to collapse due to dehydration, it was the Assyrians that became fatigued. On one night during the siege, the Egyptian and the Ethiopian armies came up and destroyed the entire Assyrian camp of around 186,000 men. The entire Assyrian army was wiped out with no warning within one day.

However, the woes of Sennacherib do not end there. He escaped and returned home to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. While out on his conquests before his debacle, he was given a plank of wood that was documented to have been an original piece of Noah's Ark. Sennacherib began to worship this piece of wood by calling it Nisroch. He had made a shrine to this at his home and was worshipping it when his two sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, assassinated him and fled to Armenia. The moral of the story is to not be an 'ass' like the Assyrians.