n more than one occasion, skeptics have accused the
Bible of making a mistake regarding a person, place
or thing simply because no archaeological evidence
has been uncovered corroborating the statement found
in the Bible. Such was the case regarding the sole
mention of Sargon, King of Assyria. In
Isaiah 20:1,
the prophet said:
“In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod (when
Sargon the king of Assyria sent him,) and fought
against Ashdod, and took it;”
For many years, skeptics insisted that the biblical
writer must be mistaken. After all, many
inscriptions and archaeological finds from the
Assyrian empire had been found, yet not a single one
of them mentioned Sargon of
Isaiah 20.
But in 1843, French archaeologist Paul Emile Botta
dealt the deathblow to this argument. Acting on
information he had received about the small village
of Khorsabad, Iraq, Botta began excavating the site
and uncovered the palace of King Sargon. The
magnificent palace complex occupied some 25 acres.
Inside the palace, Botta uncovered reception halls
with their winged animals, sculptures, bas-reliefs
and many other artifacts with inscriptions
everywhere. All of these gave a peculiar insight
into the advanced level of art that existed in
ancient Assria. Not the least among those
inscriptions was a particularly revealing
inscription discussing his actions against Ashdod,
the very city mentioned in
Isaiah 20:1.
King Sargon was the first person in recorded history
to create an empire or multi-ethnic state. His
empire encompassed the region of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, and part of what is present-day
Turkey. He formed the first Semitic dynasty in Akkad,
a region in central Iraq, north of Sumeria. He was
the founder of Mesopotamian military traditions.
During his reign of 56 years, King Sargon invaded
all the cities in the Middle East and as far as the
Arabian Gulf.
At the very beginning of his reign, he besieged and
took the city of Samaria. On an inscription found in
the palace he built at Khorsabad, he says, “The city
of Samaria I besieged and captured: 27,290 people
from its midst I carried captive. 50 chariots I took
there as an addition to my royal force… The biblical
account of this at
2 kings 17:6 reads:
“In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria
took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria,
and placed them in Halah and in Harbor by the river
of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.”
The striking similarity of the two accounts only
shows that no archaeological discovery had ever
controverted a biblical reference. Needless to say,
skeptics no longer accuse Isaiah of a historical
discrepancy regarding King Sargon.
It appears clear that archaeology, once again,
confirms the accuracy of the biblical record… a
discovery that proves how authentic the Bible is.
