I’ve been in Israel long enough to know the drill but not long enough to be numb to it. When you come to this country as an adult, the sirens never become background noise. They stay foreign in your body.

And so when the missile alerts came this week, I noticed things that maybe a native Israeli wouldn’t — or wouldn’t think to mention. Like the fact that our conservator moved a 2,700-year-old Assyrian artifact into a shelter during a warning alert with the same calm focus she’d bring to any other Wednesday.

The artifact was Sennacherib’s Prism. If you’re not an ancient Near East person: it’s a hexagonal clay cylinder covered in cuneiform text, in which the Assyrian king brags — in excruciating, obsessive detail — about his military campaigns, including his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE. He writes that he shut up King Hezekiah “like a caged bird” inside........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)