纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 021拉吉浮雕（2）

I'm in a room whose walls are completely covered with stone carvings about eight feet (2.5m) high. They tell the story of a great siege. The siege of Lachish in Judea, in 701 BC. Think of a film in stone - an early Hollywood epic, perhaps, with a cast of thousands. The first scene shows the invading army marching in, then comes the bloody battle around the besieged town, and then we move on to the dead, the injured, and the columns of passive refugees. And finally we see the victorious king presiding triumphantly over his conquest: Sennacherib, ruler of the great Assyrian empire, and the terror of the ancient Middle East.

By 700 BC, the Assyrian rulers based in northern Iraq had built an empire that stretched from Iran to Egypt - covering most of the area that we now call the Middle East. Indeed. you might almost say that this was the beginning of the idea of the Middle East as one single theatre of conflict and control. It was the largest land empire that had yet been created, and it was the result of the prodigious Assyrian war-machine.

Lachish, about 25 miles (40 km) south-west of Jerusalem, is today known as Tell ed-Duweir. At the time of the siege, it was a heavily fortified hill town, the second city after Jerusalem of the kingdom of Judah, which had managed, just, to stay independent of the Assyrians. Lachish stood at a vital strategic point on the key trade routes linking Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and to the immense wealth of Egypt. But around 700 BC , the king of Judah, Hezekiah, rebelled against the Assyrians. It was a big mistake. Sennacherib mobilised the Assyrian imperial army, fought a brilliant campaign, seized the city of Lachish, killed its defenders and deported its inhabitants. And the resounding success of the Assyrian campaign is what is celebrated in these carvings.