ABSTRACT
The famous series of reliefs from Room XXXVI in the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh showing the Assyrian siege and capture of Lachish has been well known and studied by several generations of Museum visitors, scholars and Bible students. But there is one detail possibly of some importance, certainly of interest, in this fascinating portrait of a south-west Judaean city on the Philistine frontier in its death-throes, which has not received, I think, its due attention, and I would like to dedicate a short study of it in honour of Olga Tufnell, the doyenne of the excavators of Ancient Palestine as a whole. It is the group of refugees leaving the doomed city at the bottom of the main scene (Fig. 1); it is formed by a Lachishite man driving out a camel, laden with water jars, following the ox-cart containing a family’s few household goods (Layard, 1853: Pl. 21; Paterson, n.d.: Pl. 7). Why, we may ask, a camel? What particular message is the Assyrian sculptor trying to convey to us by including in the picture this – at first sight – unusual beast? or was it a normal beast of burden in those parts? In short, what can we learn from it? The refugees leaving Lachish. B.M. 129697. (Photo: Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315423050/4d866e7b-a784-431e-9644-59266b690d45/content/fig4_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
