Analysis Of Sennacherib's Reliefs Of The Southwest Palace At Nineveh

The Court VI reliefs of the Southwest Palace at Nineveh (fig. 1) are the only instance of an Assyrian king depicting the construction and transportation of lamassu statues. Unsurprisingly, these unique depictions of engineering achievement come from Sennacherib, whose administrative policies focused heavily on technological and societal advancements. Despite Assyria’s supposedly highly militaristic society and political foundation, Sennacherib’s heightened interest in rebuilding the Assyrian heartland, advancing the engineering prowess of his empire, and apparent disinterest in conquest makes him a figure misunderstood both in the past and in modern scholarly work.

In this paper, I aim to examine how Sennacherib’s palatial wall reliefs and texts, with a specific focus on Court VI, represent Sennacherib’s engineering prowess. I start by analyzing the problems that plagued Assyria upon Sennacherib’s ascension to power. Next, I study how Sennacherib used engineering and innovation in his texts and royal imagery. Following this analysis, I examine the Court VI wall reliefs and how their imagery represents Sennacherib as the all-powerful force in Assyrian politics. After, I investigate Sennacherib’s ideology toward the balance of military and

The first of these was sorting out Sargon II’s succession. Traditionally, Sennacherib would not have faced any opposition to his placement on the throne of Assyria, given he was the crown prince of the Empire for over fifteen years before 705 BCE (Elayi 2018, 43). In Assyrian tradition, it was customary for the crown prince to bury their father at Assur before becoming king; however, Sennacherib could not perform such duties without Sargon II’s body. As a result of these broken conventions, Sennacherib likely faced questions of legitimacy from his royal advisors, especially in the first years of his reign (Elayi