Sennacherib's Sieges and Deportations Reliefs: How to Increase Emotions

Since their discovery, the iconological value of the Neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs has made most researchers forget their connection with architecture. Looking at the two aspects is necessary because the reliefs are not only a “pure décor”: stabilizing the walls of the palace, their materiality helps the architecture. Their context, moreover, gives more meaning to understanding the reliefs. The arrangement of the bas-reliefs was not chosen at random: there is a fundamental interconnection between architecture and iconological choice of reliefs. The location of the reliefs was carefully chosen to arouse the most emotional and psychological effects: it has already been demonstrated that the attention of an observer entering an Assyrian palace is captured by certain reliefs because they demarcate immediately themselves because of light, colour, place, proximity to the king’s podium.