Case file · High strangeness
Sennacherib's army struck down
2 Kings 19 says an angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night outside Jerusalem in 701 BC, and Sennacherib withdrew.
701 BCE · 31.78, 35.23 · status: legend
The account
Herodotus tells a different version in which field mice ate the Assyrians' bowstrings. Sennacherib's own annals say he shut Hezekiah up 'like a bird in a cage' and took tribute, without claiming to take the city.
The sceptical view
Historians suggest disease or a negotiated withdrawal; the Assyrian records confirm the siege but not the catastrophe.