Sennacherib's Palace without Rival at Nineveh
John Malcolm Russell
University Of Chicago Press
Best known today from biblical accounts of his exploits and   ignominious end, the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.)   was once the ruler of all western Asia.  In his capital at   Nineveh, in what is now northern Iraq, he built what he   called the "Palace without Rival."  Though only scattered   traces of this magnificent structure are visible today,   contemporary written descriptions and surviving wall reliefs   permit a remarkably detailed reconstruction of the appearance   and significance of the palace.     An art historian trained in ancient Near East philology,   archaeology, and history, John Malcolm Russell marshals these   resources to investigate the meaning and political function   of the palace of Sennacherib.  He contends that the meaning   of the monument cannot be found in images or texts alone; nor   can these be divorced from architectural context.  Thus his   study combines discussions of the context of inscriptions in   Sennacherib's palace with reconstructions of its physical   appearance and analyses of the principles by which the   subjects of Sennacherib's reliefs were organized to express   meaning.  Many of the illustrations are published here for   the first time, notably drawings of palace reliefs made by   nineteenth-century excavators and photographs taken in the   course of the author's own excavations at Nineveh.      John Malcolm Russell is assistant professor in the   Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia   University.