Lachish Reliefs

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Neil MacGregor's history of the world told through objects from the British Museum in London arrives at the Palace of Sennacherib in Northern Iraq. Throughout this week, Neil MacGregor explains the key power struggles taking place across the globe around 3000 years ago, as ambitious new forces were building sophisticated new societies. It seems that war has been one of the constant themes of our shared human history and, in this programme, Neil MacGregor tells the story of the Assyrian king Sennacherib and his bloody siege of Lachish in Judah in 701 BC. The siege is described unsparingly in giant stone carvings that were placed around the king's palace and that show, perhaps for the first time, the terrible consequences of war on civilian populations. The Assyrian war machine was to create the largest empire that the world had ever seen and used the terror tactic of mass deportations. Statesman Paddy Ashdown and the historian Anthony Beevor both reflect on these powerful images of war.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	3,000 years ago, the world was, as usual, at war. On the face of it, this might seem surprising,
0:21.0	as the entire population of the world 3,000 years ago was only about 50
0:24.9	million people roughly the number that now live in England. So you would have
0:28.8	thought that there might have been enough land and wealth to go around without
0:32.1	major conflict.
0:34.0	But however you look at human history,
0:36.3	it's quite clear that one of the constants
0:38.2	is the urge to fight. And around a thousand B.C. we find evidence for war on a quite new scale, but with exactly
0:52.0	the same results as war always brings with it.
0:57.0	rulers wish to establish their total power.
1:00.0	It was a demonstration of their supremacy.
1:02.0	There's always wars. there's always deaths, there's always refugees.
1:07.0	They're a byproduct of war and have been since the very, very earliest times.
1:13.2	A history of the world in a hundred objects. The lackish relief. A stone panel from the Mediterranean to the Pacific.
1:52.0	In what's now Iraq, the Assyrians created a model of
1:55.0	empire which would last for centuries. Established powers ruling Egypt and
1:59.7	China were invaded by outsiders and indeed across the whole world we encounter new peoples and new powers.
2:07.0	This week's objects take us into the minds of these peoples and powers of 3,000 years ago. And our first object takes us
2:16.0	straight into the heat of battle. I'm in a room whose walls are completely covered with stone carvings about eight feet high.
2:33.6	They tell the story of a great siege,
2:36.6	the siege of LaHiche in Judea in 701 BC.
	...

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