3039 AM · 722 BCE · world history
Sargon II and the Fall of Samaria
Assyria takes the capital of the Northern Kingdom and carries its people into the depths of the empire.
The siege of Samaria lasted three years and ended as kings changed in Nineveh; Sargon II recorded in his annals the taking of the city and the number deported — over twenty-seven thousand people. The kingdom of Israel ceased to exist, and inhabitants of other conquered regions were settled on its lands. Sargon then fought in Urartu and Babylonia, and near Nineveh built himself a new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, with a palace and winged bulls at the gates. He fell in battle, and under his heir the unfinished city was abandoned at once.
§Sources
Documents of the period
- cuneiform chronicles and king lists
Scholarship
- archaeology of Mesopotamia
Basis: documents and evidence.