This is an interesting discovery because of a Biblical account of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria who attacked the fortified cities of Judah, laying siege on Jerusalem, but failed to capture it.
The Assyrian army captured the Israelite capital at Samaria and carried away the citizens of the northern kingdom into captivity. The virtual destruction of Israel left the southern kingdom, Judah, to fend for itself among warring Near Eastern kingdoms. The King of Judah then was Hezekiah.
Sennacherib laid siege to Judah. In an attempt to demoralize the Judeans, the field commander of Sennacherib announced to the people on the city walls that Hezekiah was deceiving them, and their God, Yahweh could not deliver Jerusalem from the king of Assyria. He listed the gods of the people thus far swept away by Sennacherib then asked, "Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me?"
During the siege, Hezekiah clad himself in sackcloth out of anguish from the psychological warfare that the Assyrians were waging. The prophet Isaiah took an active part in the political life of Judah. When Jerusalem was threatened, he assured Hezekiah that the city would be delivered and Sennacherib would fall.
The Hebrew Bible states that during the night, an angel of God brought death to 185,000 Assyrians troops. Hezekiah had shut up all water outside the city so thirst and the fatigue of a long and tiring campaign possibly could have forced the Assyrians to retreat. It is also a possibility that a disease/plague spread throughout the camp and killed a large number of Sennacherib's men. When Sennacherib saw the destruction wreaked on his army, he withdrew to Nineveh.
University of Chicago historian William Hardy McNeill speculates that the accounts of mass death among the Assyrian army in the Tanakh might be explained by an outbreak of cholera (or other water-borne diseases) due to the springs beyond the city walls having been blocked, thus depriving the besieging force of a safe water supply.
In 681 BCE, while worshiping in the temple of Nisroch, Sennacherib was killed by his own son. He had ruled Assyria for twenty-four years.
