The Horse: From Arabia to Royal Ascot – in pictures

Album leaf, from the Mughal dynasty; a horse with elaborate saddle and harness being led by a groom Photograph: The British Museum

Laetitia, Lady Lade (1793) by George Stubbs
Photograph: The British Museum

Assyrian wall relief showing a lion hunt Photograph: Tony Kyriacou/Rex Features

A boundary stone, or kudurru, of Nebuchadnezzar I, from Sippar, Middle Babylonian Iraq, 1000BC Photograph: Tony Kyriacou/Rex Features

A horse, likely to be Flying Childers, with a groom. Drawn by James Seymour (1702-52) Photograph: The British Museum

Fragment of a Neo-Assyrian carved limestone relief featuring the heads and foreparts of three horses drawing a chariot, along with reins, the hands of a charioteer and whip, ninth century BC Photograph: The British Museum

Akbar hunting on horseback, Mughal, India Photograph: The British Museum

Gold model chariot from the Oxus treasure, Takht-i Kawud, Tajikistan, Achaemenid Persian empire, fifth-fourth century BC Photograph: The British Museum

Hambletonian and Diamond at Newmarket (1800) Photograph: The British Museum

An etching showing Sir Henry Vane-Tempest's horse, Hambletonian, preparing to start against Mr Cookson's Diamond Photograph: The British Museum

Man on horseback, with a falcon, from early 18th-century India Photograph: The British Museum

Statuette of a horseman, from the Sanctuary of Apollo, Cyprus, sixth-fifth century BC Photograph: Tony Kyriacou/Rex Features

The Cambridge Telegraph; a mail coach about to depart outside the White Horse Tavern at night (1825-1836) Photograph: The British Museum

Three horses galloping across a bare landscape. The chestnut horse has a lasso round its neck, and the white horse around its hind leg. From the mid-16th century Photograph: The British Museum