uburbs in which every
house is sheltered by a date tree, is figured in the centre. At the top and
sides the walls are projected outwards from the city; at the bottom they
are thrown inwards in order, no doubt, to leave room for the tops of the
date trees. Moreover, the sculptor had to find room for a large building on
the right of his fortification. This is, apparently, the palace of the
king. Guarded by a barbican and surrounded by trees it rises upon its
artificial mound some little distance in front of the city. The artist also
wished to show that palace and city were protected by a winding river
teeming with fish, into which fell a narrower stream in the neighbourhood
of the palace. If he had projected the walls of the palace and its barbican
in the same way as those of the other buildings he would either have had to
encroach upon his streams and to hide their junction or to divert their
course. In order to avoid this he made use of several points of view, and
laid his two chief structures on the ground in such a fashion that they
form an oblique angle with the rest of the buildings. The result thus
obtained looks strange to us, but it fulfilled his purpose; it gave a clear
idea of how the various buildings were situated with respect to each other
and it reproduced with fidelity the topographical features of the conquered
country.

The chief desire of the sculptor was to be understood. That governing
thought can nowhere be more clearly traced than in one of the reliefs
dealing with the exploits of Sennacherib.[417] Here he had to explain that
in order to penetrate into a mountainous country like Armenia, the king had
been compelled to follow the bed of a torrent between high wooded banks. In
the middle of the picture we see the king in his chariot, followed by
horsemen and foot soldiers marching in the water. Towards the summit of the
relief, the heights that overhang the stream are represented by the usual
network. But how to represent the wooded mountains on this side of the
water? The artist has readily solved the question, according to his lights,
by showing the near mountains and their trees upside down, a solution which
is quite on all fours, in principle, with the plans above described. The
hills are projected on each side of the line made by the torrent, so that
it runs along their bases, as it does in fact; but in this case the
topsy-turviness of the trees and hills has a very startling effect. The
intention