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Archaeologist confirms biblical site of 185,000 Assyrian troops wiped out by an angel

Archaeological expert says Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill is the site of ancient Assyrian military camp, confirming Bible story.

By World Israel News Staff

An archaeological expert announced that an innovative mapping technique can confirm the presence of ancient Assyrian military camps near Jerusalem, in line with a Biblical account of an angel wiping out those troops in an epic battle.

According to the Bible story, God sent an angel to slaughter some 185,000 Assyrian troops who had been stationed near the city of Jerusalem.

Stephen Compton, an independent researcher specializing in Near Eastern archaeology, told Fox News Digital that a stone carving from the Assyrian king Sennacherib’s palace held the key to understanding exactly where a military conquest had taken place around 700 B.C.

“One of the important cities that he conquered, which is mentioned in the Bible as well as in Assyrian documents, is Lachish,” Compton said.

“And on the wall of Sennacherib’s palace he had a relief depicting, in stone carving, the conquest of the city of Lachish, and then after one side his military camp. And his military camp was a large oval. This image from the wall of his palace is now on the wall of the British Museum. But it’s never been found.”

Compton searched images of Israeli terrain for sites resembling an oval, which would potentially indicate the location of the Assyrian military installations.

Once he found a likely location, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Compton took an image of the relief and and compared it to an old aerial photograph of the area.

He was able to match up the “recognizable features in the landscape with the actual landscape and overlayed the two,” he said. “I used earlier photographs of the landscape from World War II, right before major changes were made. And it was a match.”

The area, now known as Ammunition Hill, contains the ruins of ancient stone walls, which Compton said are part of the Assyrian camp.

“I think it’s exciting to have found the spot, and I hope that we’ll soon see archaeological excavations there that can give us more information about the site,” he said.