When Assyrian king Sennacherib of Nineveh ascended the throne (704-681
BC) and acquired control over the ancient Near East, he built his
“Palace Without a Rival” and decorated its walls with carved relief
panels showcasing his engineering projects, processions, and battles
with adversaries from regions bordering Assyrian territory.
Sennacherib must have had a purpose for putting particular reliefs in
particular areas of his palace, however, he left no texts describing his
interior decoration plan. Palace reliefs are a form of nonverbal
communication that use descriptive detail and compositional devices as a
substitute for speech and thought. The building structure would have
been used to create both boundaries and open spaces which either allowed
or prevented visitors to the palace access to specific rooms and relief
content. This dissertation research employs spatial analytical computer
models to create quantitative data for examining potential human
movement patterns throughout the palace in order to explore access, or
restriction, for viewing the content of palace relief art.
The models were run from three entrance points of the palace to assess
access for various types of visitors such as foreign dignitaries,
servants, and the general populace. The first entrance was through the
main Throneroom Courtyard H; the second was a secluded tunnel leading
from the bottom of the citadel mound into a back hallway; and the last
an entrance from an isolated supplemental throneroom off of the Western
Terrace. The three entrances were analyzed using various models which
mapped depth and accessibility including: j-graphs, gradation
color-coded depth plans, axial maps, connectivity maps, isovist views,
and virtual agent movement. Once the computer models were generated,
each room and area of the palace was analyzed individually together with
the information about history and art in order to establish and discuss
potential movement patterns, accessibility, intention, and viewership.
Issue Date:
Nov-2020
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