A History of the World in 100 Objects: Lachish Reliefs

Director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum. It seems that war has been one of the constant themes of our shared human history and Neil 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 historian Antony Beevor reflect on these powerful images of war