In the meantime, the defeated Tirhakah was unquestionably chagrined to learn that little Judah had been delivered from the power that had defeated him. To apologize for his own failure to support Judah, Tirhakah claimed credit for the defeat of the Assyrian horde by claiming that his god, Amon, had caused the camp of the Assyrians to be invaded by millions of field mice. He claimed that these tiny rodents in one night ate up all the bowstrings of the army and thus they were unable to fight. His interpretation of the event is a bit sketchy, to say the least! In the Assyrian Room at the British Museum, a very important exhibit will be seen in Table Case “E”. This is a six-sided clay prism containing an unabridged record of Sennacherib’s own account of these stirring events. Here he has given us his story of the invasion of Palestine and the siege of Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah. So important is this record that we produce here, in its entirety, the fifth oblique (or plane) of this great prism: “In my third campaign I went to the land of the Hittites. I marched against the City of Ekron and put to death the priests and chief men who had committed the sin of rebellion and I hung up their bodies on stakes all around the City ... but as for Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke 46 of his strong cities, together with innumerable fortresses and small towns that depended upon them by overthrowing the walls and open attack, by battle, engines and battering rams I besieged I captured; I brought out of the midst of them and counted as a spoil 200,000 persons great and small, male and female, besides mules, camels, sheep, asses and oxen without number: “Hezekiah himself I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem his strong city. I built a line of forts against him and kept back himself from going forth out of the great gate of his city. I cut off his cities which I had spoiled out of the midst of his land and I gave them to Metinti, king of Ashdod, and Padi King of Ekron and Til-Baal, King of Gaza and made his country small. In addition to their former yearly tribute and gifts I added other tribute and homage due to my majesty, and I laid it upon them. The fear of the greatness of my majesty overwhelmed him, even Hezekiah, and he sent after me to Nineveh my royal city, the Arabs and his bodyguards, whom he had brought for the defense of his royal city Jerusalem, and had furnished with pay along with thirty talents.... Eight hundred talents of pure silver, carbuncles and other precious stones, a couch of ivory, thrones of ivory, and elephants hide and elephant tusks, rare woods of all kinds a vast treasure, as well as Unachs from his palace, and dancing men and dancing women. And he sent his Ambassador to offer homage.”