One of the most valuable artifacts in the entire Oriental Institute is this record of Sennacherib of Assyria (Jonah and Nahum prophesied much about Assyria). This is one of 5 prisms (another is in the British Museum), but unlike the Black Obelisk, this is an original. 2 Kings 18, Isaiah 36, and 2 Chronicles 32 all record the account that this prism tells.

Isaiah 36 – “Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them. And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field.”

In the British Museum is a massive carving of the siege of Lachish. Siege ramps are still visible in Israel near the ruins of Lachish.

“Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the recorder. And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain words) I have counsel and strength for war: now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. But if thou say to me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar?

This is a reference to Hezekiah removing the “horned altars” – we’ll see one in the next hall.

“Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.”

Deuteronomy 17:16 forbade the Israelites to multiply horses.

“How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? And am I now come up without the LORD against this land to destroy it? the LORD said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it. Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and speak not to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall. But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us: this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The LORD will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king’s commandment was, saying, Answer him not. Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, that was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.”

Isaiah 37:1 – “And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.”

Why didn’t Hezekiah do this earlier?

Isaiah 37:35-36 – “For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake. Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.”

“El” is a generic name for “god,” like “Allah” in Arabic, or “God” in English.

The God of Israel revealed His name as יהוה  / YHVH (LORD in the KJV).

Before you are the idols talked about in Hosea 8:4 (“They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.”).

On the right is Baal. 1 Kings 18:21 tells of Elijah on Mount Carmel (“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”).

Interestingly, the name Elijah (El-Jah) means (remember Hebrew is right to left) YH (Jehovah) is the EL (God).

To the left are female fertility statues, 3,000 year old proofs that the Israelites disobeyed God, as Exodus 20:4 records: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Many Canaanites sought fertility from idols, but in Genesis 30:22, God opened Rachel’s womb – not Baal. 1 Samuel 1:5 records the Lord had shut up her womb. When God gave Hannah a son, she named him Samuel, as 1 Samuel 1:20 recounts Because I have asked him of the Lord.

Solomon & Ahab had thrones of ivory coated in gold

I Kings 10:18 Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.

As did Ahab, I Kings 22:39 Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did , and the ivory house which he made , and all the cities that he built , are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

Sometimes the intact altar is on loan – this one appears to be a “destroyed altar”

Now Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places 1 Kings 3:3

Unlike a “Biblical” altar:

Exodus 27:2 And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it with brass.

God did not want altars everywhere, only in Jerusalem –  and Sennacherib noticed Hezekiah took away the bad altars and destroyed them like this one.

2 Kings 18:22 But if ye say unto me, We trust in the Lord our God: is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?

Megiddo was a royal city built by Solomon, as evidenced by the style of the capitals (shown in the picture) at the top of the columns.

1 Kings 9:15 And this is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised; for to build the house of the Lord, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.

Often we think of Israel as just Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but it was a nation of many fortified cites. Megiddo goes back to the time of Joshua

Joshua 12:21 The king of Taanach, one; the king of Megiddo, one;

Megiddo was where good King Josiah was killed by Pharaoh Necho:

2 Kings 23:29 In his days Pharaohnechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates: and king Josiah went against him; and he slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

And is where the battle of Armageddon (mound of Megiddo) will be:

Revelation 16:16 And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

 

On the far right wall of the Megiddo Room is a fragment of one of the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible.

This is a replica of the (mostly) original Stele, housed in the Louvre in Paris.

The smoother surfaced parts are created based on the paper sketch, while the rougher fragments are the originals as they are today.

The Mesha Stele was found in Dibon, Jordan in August 1868 by a missionary. Pretty soon people realized this was very valuable and the Berlin Museum and the French Consulate got into a bidding war. The next year some local Arabs, realizing all that was at stake, laboriously hoisted it out of the earth and lit a fire around it, and after pouring cold water on it they chipped away several large pieces which they distributed among a few of them. Later the French re-assembled 669 of the estimated 1100 consonants from the pieces and preserved the inscription. It now remains in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The stone is written in Moabite, and refers to the “House of Omri”, Yahweh, and the “House of David.” The Bible talks about Mesha

2 Kings 3:4 And Mesha king of Moab was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool. 5 But it came to pass, when Ahab was dead, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

This stele says “Omri was king of Israel, and oppressed Moab during many days, and Chemosh was angry with his aggressions. His son succeeded him, and he also said, I will oppress Moab.”

During this battle Jehoshaphat joined Ahab, and they ran out of water, and Elisha told them to dig ditches (2 Kings 3:16).

Another violation of the Ten Commandments. This is reminiscent of the Golden calf of I Kings 12:28-30 of Baal.

Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 29 And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. 30 And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.

Jeroboam may say “Is there anything inherently evil about a bull?” But when Canaanites worshipped animal replicas, God’s people had to be willing to do without to demonstrate their uniqueness to God.

Opposite the replica of the Rosetta Stone (located in the British Museum) is a collection of Egyptian Pottery.

Approximately 2090 BC – Abraham was in Egypt – check the dates to see objects from this era

Genesis 12:10 And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.

According to conservative Bible scholars, 1446 BC was the date for the Exodus. To the right of the Abrahamic era artifacts, are artifacts from the  Israelite enslavement era. Similar objects may have brought on the Exodus trip.

Exodus 3:22 But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.

Joseph was embalmed and coffined similar to this https://thetorah.com/our-mummified-patriarchs-jacob-and-joseph/
Genesis 50:26 So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.