Context of the reliefs

Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear. 2 Kings 18 13-14, King James Version

This is the biblical description of the siege of Lachish. In 701 BCE Hezekiah, king of Judah, revolted against the Assyrian domination in the region. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, launched a military campaign to crush this revolt. He first went to Lachish, the main fortress in Judah, and laid siege to it. This event is unique because we have sources from multiple points of views: biblical sources, Assyrian annals, archaeological sources and of course the Lachish reliefs.Josette Elayi, Sennacherib, king of Assyria (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018), 69-74.

These reliefs were used as wall decoration in the royal palace of Nineveh in ancient Mesopotamia (Fig. 1), in the north of modern-day Iraq. The palace was built by king Sennacherib. It was common for Assyrian kings to decorate the walls with reliefs commemorating historical events. The reliefs depicting Lachish are unique, because a whole room was devoted to them. These are also the largest reliefs devoted to the siege of a single city. The reliefs were rediscovered by Henry Layard during excavations in Nineveh in 1845-1847.About the size, see David Ussishkin, “The “Lachish Reliefs”, Israel Exploration Journal 30, no. 3-4 (1980): 176-178; about the excavation see Henry Layard, Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (New York: Harpers and Brothers Publishers, 1853), 128.