ABSTRACT
The final verse of Byron’s poem illustrates the active use of images in a sacred context, the Assyrians’ temple to their father-god. The assumption (not necessarily correct) is that the ‘idols’ represented the deity himself. The human context of the act was Assyrian aggression towards Israel, the campaign fought between Sennacherib,king of Assyria (705-681 BC), and the forces of Judah in the early seventh century BC (Metzger & Coogan 1993: 686). Sennacherib’s army – both warriors and their horses – was totally destroyed, wiped out by a plague visited upon them on the battlefield by the Israelite God Yahweh. The breakage of the temple-images appears to have been conducted as a mourning-ritual, in recognition of defeat and loss of life and as a sign that Baal’s power had been vanquished through the intervention of a foreign God.
