The famous Lachish reliefs are carved stone panels discovered in Nineveh (in present-day Iraq) in 1845-7 CE by 28-year-old adventurer and archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, a 19th century version of Indiana Jones. Their legendary barbarity and fierceness was a deliberate policy intended to foster enemy submission and minimize the threat of revolt by vassals and their reputation is enhanced by several references to them in the Old Testament and by the extensive (and sometimes grisly) battle scenes that were found amongst their ruins. Rising to crush the enemies who surrounded their kingdom, the Assyrians became the most potent military force in the region. The citadel was sacked by a coalition of former Assyrian vassal states and utterly destroyed in 612 BCE.The Romantic poet Lord Byron began his poem “The Destruction of Sennacherib” with “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.” At the height of their power, the Assyrians were very much like a wolf among sheep. Constructed from over 160 million bricks, the complex was the home of King Sennacherib, and contained numerous friezes depicting his violent campaigns, including the famous Lachish carvings now housed in the British Museum. Built in what is now known as the city of Mosul in Iraq, the palace of Nineveh was once the center of the most populated citadel in the ancient world, and the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BCE).