Sargon II on Samaria: 27,290 taken away
The deportation of the northern kingdom and the resettlement of foreigners in Samaria are both recorded by the king who carried them out.
Named outside the BibleInscriptionc. 710 BC
Sargon II's annals, and a better-preserved prism from Nimrud, record the taking of Samaria and the deportation of 27,290 of its people, with fifty chariots kept for the royal corps and new settlers brought in.
I besieged and conquered Samaria, led away as booty 27,290 inhabitants of it… I settled therein people from countries which I myself had conquered.
- Found
- Khorsabad and Nimrud, Iraq, 1843 — Paul-Émile Botta (Khorsabad); later excavations at Nimrud
- Now held at
- Musée du Louvre, Paris; British Museum, London; Iraq Museum, Baghdad
- Language
- Akkadian
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
Assyrian royal figures are royal claims. Whether Sargon or Shalmaneser V took the city, and the exact year, remain debated.
How historians use it
Standard primary source for the end of the kingdom of Israel and for Assyrian deportation policy.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Nimrud Prism, 720 BCE — text and translation
- Becking, The Fall of Samaria: An Historical and Archaeological Study (1992)
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.