Carved between 700 and 681 BCE, as a decoration of the South-West Palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh (in modern Iraq), the relief is today in the British Museum in London,[3] and was included as item 21 in the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects by the museum's former director Neil MacGregor.

Commenting on the inscription above the seated figure of Sennacherib, Layard wrote: Here, therefore, was the actual picture of the taking of Lachish, the city as we know from the Bible, besieged by Sennacherib, when he sent his generals to demand tribute of Hezekiah, and which he had captured before their return; evidence of the most remarkable character to confirm the interpretation of the inscriptions, and to identify the king who caused them to be engraved with the Sennacherib of Scripture.

This highly interesting series of bas-reliefs contained, moreover, an undoubted representation of a king, a city, and a people, with whose names we are acquainted, and of an event described in Holy Writ.Layard noted in his work that Henry Rawlinson, the "Father of Assyriology", disagreed with the identification as the biblical Lachish.

The descriptions shown in the reliefs were compared with those written about Lachish in the bible and found to be similar as well.

[12] The size of the relief, its position in the central room of his palace, and the fact that the Lachish relief constitutes the only battle scene created by Sennacherib, indicate the importance he gave to this successful siege and presumed victory over Judah.