Lost the Battle? Three Case Studies of Military Defeat: Rewrite History and Claim you Won the War, Ignore the Defeat and Consolidate Power, or Pray to God

n this article I analyse three historically and chronologi-cally related accounts of defeat in battle, and the losing side’s response to these defeats. The battles all occurred within three decades of each other: The biblical account of Sennacherib’s defeat at Jerusalem in 701 BCE; the Assyrian defeat at the borders of Egypt in 673 BCE; and Taharqa’s defeat in Egypt by the Assyrians in 671 BCE. The main protagonists were Hezekiah, king of Judah, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, kings of Assyria, and Taharqa, king of Egypt and Kush, who fought for control over the southern Levant and Egypt, and lost. The descriptions of these events were recorded in several sources, from different genres and different kingdoms, but were all written relatively close to the events they depict.