The Reoccurring Messages Of Babylonian And Assyrian Art

In Mesopotamia, around the late third and early second millennia, the region was under a Babylonian dynasty, until falling to the Hittites, essentially leaving Assyrians in control of the southern region of Mesopotamia. Both Babylonian and Assyrian dynasties would encode messages in their art and architecture, typically though cuneiform by making impressions into clay to depict text, often expressing royal power or supremacy. Essentially, Babylonian and Assyrian art would typically incorporate messages that express power, authority, and supremacy, in which many of these messages could be considered propagandistic, intending to influence others of their political or religious beliefs. Although both Babylonian and Assyrian art expression various messages, major reoccurring messages expressed political or military power and authority, often through scenes of battle, animals, and royal supremacy through the hierarchy scale. Babylonian and

One major example of how rulers would assert their political authority though art is the Code of Hammurabi, which not only includes 282 laws, but also depicts Hammurabi, a Babylonian ruler, directly receiving laws from Shamash, the sun god (German). With this, Babylonian and Assyrian art did not only depict rulers and leaders through the hieratic scale, for example, depicting the sun god Shamash as taller than the Babylonian leader, but they also asserted royal and political supremacy through architecture. Assyrians began constructed royal palaces and monumental architecture expressing their power and authority, some structures bing built fairly high above ground to express the rulers' power and