How Are Assyrian Reliefs Different From Sumerian Art Quizlet

The Mesopotamian Cultures

Sumer was an ancient Chalcolithic civilisation that saw its artistic styles modify throughout different periods in its history.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the historical importance of the diverse civilizations that existed in Mesopotamia

Central Takeaways

Fundamental Points

• The Eridu economic system produced arable food, which immune its inhabitants to settle in one location and course a labor force specializing in various arts and crafts.
• Writing produced during the early on Sumerian period suggest the abundance of pottery and other artistic traditions.
• Elements of the early on Sumerian culture spread through a large surface area of the Near and Middle Eastward.
• The Sumerian city states rose to power during the prehistorical Ubaid and Uruk periods.

Key Terms

• theocratic:A course of regime in which a deity is officially recognized every bit the ceremonious ruler. Official policy is governed past officials regarded every bit divinely guided, or is pursuant to the doctrine of a item religion or religious grouping.
• casting:A sculptural process in which molten material (ordinarily metal) is poured into a mold, allowed to cool and harden, and become a solid object.
• Cuneiform:I of the earliest known forms of written expression that began as a system of pictographs. It emerged in Sumer effectually the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium (the Uruk Iv flow).
• Chalcolithic:Too known as the Copper Age, a phase of the Statuary Age in which the add-on of tin to copper to form bronze during smelting remained still unknown. The Copper Historic period was originally divers as a transition betwixt the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.

Sumer was an ancient civilization in southern Mesopotamia (modern Republic of iraq) during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages. Although the historical records in the region exercise not become dorsum much further than ca. 2900 BCE, modern historians believe that Sumer was first settled between ca. 4500 and 4000 BCE past people who may or may non accept spoken the Sumerian language. These people, now called the "Ubaidians," were the offset to drain the marshes for agronomics; develop merchandise; and plant industries including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork , masonry, and pottery.

The Sumerian city of Eridu, which at that time bordered the Persian Gulf, is believed to be the world's showtime urban center. Here, three separate cultures fused—the peasant Ubaidian farmers, the nomadic Semitic-speaking pastoralists (farmers who raise livestock), and fisher folk. The surplus of storable food created by this economic system immune the region's population to settle in i place, instead of migrating as hunter-gatherers. It also allowed for a much greater population density, which required an extensive labor force and a division of labor with many specialized arts and crafts.

An early grade of wedge-shaped writing chosen cuneiform developed in the early Sumerian period. During this time, cuneiform and pictograms suggest the abundance of pottery and other artistic traditions. In addition to the production of vessels , clay was too used to make tablets for inscribing written documents. Metallic also served various purposes during the early Sumerian menstruation. Smiths used a class of casting to create the blades for daggers. On the other hand, softer metals like copper and gold could be hammered into the forms of plates, necklaces, and collars.

Stele of the Vultures: Battle formations on a fragment of the Stele of the Vultures. Example of Sumerian pictorial cuneiform writing.

By the belatedly fourth millennium BCE, Sumer was divided into nearly a dozen contained urban center-states delineated by canals and other boundary makers. At each city middle stood a temple dedicated to the detail patron god or goddess of the city. Priestly governors ruled over these temples and were intimately tied to the city'south religious rites.

Sumer: Map of the Cities of Sumer.

The Ubaid Period

The Ubaid menstruation is marked by a distinctive style of painted pottery, equally seen in the instance below, produced domestically on a wearisome wheel. This fashion eventually spread throughout the region. During this time, the first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was established at Eridu by farmers who first pioneered irrigation agriculture. Eridu remained an important religious middle even after nearby Ur surpassed it in size.

Ubaid pottery

The Uruk Period

The transition from the Ubaid catamenia to the Uruk menses is marked by a gradual shift to a smashing variety of unpainted pottery mass-produced by specialists on fast wheels. The trough below is an example of pottery from this period.

Uruk trough: The unpainted surface of this trough marks information technology as a production of the Uruk flow.

By the time of the Uruk flow (ca. 4100–2900 BCE), the volume of trade appurtenances transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified , temple-centered cities where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. Artifacts of the Uruk civilization have been plant over a wide expanse—from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and every bit far east every bit Fundamental Islamic republic of iran. The Uruk civilisation, exported by Sumerian traders and colonists, had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually developed their own comparable, competing economies and cultures.

Sumerian cities during the Uruk menses were probably theocratic and probable headed past priest-kings (ensis), assisted past a council of elders, including both men and women. The later Sumerian pantheon (gods and goddesses) was likely modeled upon this political structure. In that location is piddling evidence of institutionalized violence or professional soldiers during the Uruk period. Towns generally lacked fortified walls, suggesting petty, if any, demand for defense. During this period, Uruk became the well-nigh urbanized urban center in the world, surpassing for the beginning time fifty,000 inhabitants.

Gilgamesh

The primeval king authenticated through archaeological evidence is Enmebaragesi of Kish, whose name is also mentioned in the Gilgamesh epic (ca. 2100 BCE)—leading to the suggestion that Gilgamesh himself might have been a historical king of Uruk. As the Epic of Gilgamesh shows, the second millennium BCE was associated with increased violence. Cities became walled and increased in size as undefended villages in southern Mesopotamia disappeared.

Ceramics in Mesopotamia

The invention of the potter's bike in the 4th millennium BCE led to several stylistic shifts and varieties in grade of Mesopotamian ceramics.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate Ubaid pottery from later styles in Mesopotamian ceramics

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The invention and evolution of the potter's wheel allowed individuals to produce vessels at increasing speeds and in increasing numbers.
• Ubaid pottery was more than decorative and unique than Uruk pottery.
• As ceramics evolved, shapes and sizes of dirt objects became more varied.
• Clay could as well be used for writing tablets that could be fired, if the owner believed the text was important.

Key Terms

• ceramics:The craft of making objects from dirt.
• throwing:Shaping dirt on a potter's bicycle.
• stylus:A writing implement that incises lines into surfaces, such equally clay.
• kiln:A special kind of oven used for firing ceramic objects at high temperatures.

Although ceramics developed in East Asia c. xx,000-10,000 BCE, the do of throwing arose with the invention of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamia around the fourth millennium BCE. The earliest clay vessels engagement to the Chalcolithic Era, which is divided into the Ubaid (5000-4000 BCE) and Uruk (4000-3100 BCE) periods.

The Chalcolithic Era

The Ubaid flow is marked by a distinctive style  of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia. Ceramists produced vases, bowls, and pocket-sized jars domestically on wearisome wheels, painting unique abstract  designs on the fired dirt.

Vase from the Late Ubaid Period, 4500-4000 BCE: A pottery jar from the Late Ubaid Flow on display in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Experts differentiate the Ubaid period from the Uruk period by the style of pottery produced in each era. During the Uruk period, the potter'due south bicycle avant-garde to allow for faster speeds. Every bit such, ceramists could produce pottery more apace, leading to the mass product of standardized, unpainted styles of vessels.

The Akkiadian Empire

As the Akkadian Empire overtook the Sumerian urban center-states , ceramists connected to produce bowls, vases, jars, and other objects in a multifariousness of shapes and sizes. Like Uruk pottery, the surfaces of these objects were left unpainted, although some vessels appear to take a form of abstract reliefs on the surface. This photo displays the various forms (including a form that resembles a present-day cake stand up) that pottery took during the Akkadian Empire.

Akkadian pottery: A collection of Akkadian pottery on display at the Oriental Found Museum, University of Chicago.

Ur III

The Third Ur Dynasty , improve known as Ur III, witnessed the continuation of unpainted ceramic vessels that took a variety of forms. This photo depicts an urn that resembles today's flower vases, as well every bit bowls, cups, and a smaller vase.

Pottery from the Ur 3 flow: A collection of pottery from the Ur 3 period on display at the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago.

Every bit in previous eras, clay was likewise used to produce writing tablets that were incised with styluses fashioned from blunted reeds. Often, tablets were used for tape-keeping (the ancient version of an office memo). Like other ceramic objects, tablets could exist fired in a kiln to produce a permanent grade if the text was believed significant plenty to preserve. The tablets in the photograph below comprise information nearly subcontract animals and workers.

Authoritative texts in cuneiform writing: A drove of administrative texts in cuneiform writing on display at the Oriental Institute Museum, Academy of Chicago.

Babylonian Ceramics

Pottery produced during the "Sometime" Babylonian menstruum shows a return to painted abstruse designs and increased variety in forms. In this photograph, a bowl, a jar, and a goblet testify remnants of pigment on their exteriors.

Old Babylonian pottery: A collection of quondam Babylonian pottery on display at the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago.

Sculpture in Mesopotamia

While the purposes that Mesopotamian sculpture served remained relatively unchanged for 2000 years, the methods of conveying those purposes varied greatly over time.

Learning Objectives

Place the purposes of the sculptures featured in this concept

Key Takeaways

Primal Points

• Mesopotamian sculptures were predominantly created for religious and political purposes.
• Common materials included dirt, metal, and stone fashioned into reliefs and sculptures in the round .
• The Uruk period marked a development of rich narrative imagery and increasing lifelikeness of human figures.
• Hieratic calibration was often used in Mesopotamian sculpture to convey the significance of gods and royalty.
• Subsequently the end of the Uruk flow, subject affair began to depict scenes of warfare and became increasingly violent and intimidating.

Key Terms

• register:A usually horizontal division of separate scenes in two- or three-dimensional art.
• hieratic scale:A visual method of marking the significance of a figure through its size. The more than of import a effigy is, the larger it appears.
• terracotta:Clay that has been fired in a kiln.
• high relief:A sculpture that projects significantly from its background, providing deep shadows.
• votive:An object left in temples or other religious locations for a multifariousness of spiritual purposes.
• colossal:Extremely tall.
• lyre:A hand-held stringed instrument resembling a small harp.
• cylinder seal:A pocket-sized object adorned with carved images of animals, writing, or both, used to sign official documents.
• in the round:Sculpture that stands freely, separate from a background.
• relief:A sculpture that projects from a groundwork.
• mixed-media:Artwork consisting of 2 or more than different materials.
• nomadic:Mobile; moving from i place to another, never settling in ane location for also long.

The current archaeological record dates sculpture in Mesopotamia the 10th millennium BCE, before the dawn of civilization . Sculptural forms include humans, animals, and cylinder seals with cuneiform writing and imagery in the round or as reliefs. Materials range from terra cotta , stones like alabaster and gypsum, and metals like copper and bronze .

Hunter-Gatherers and Samarra

Because the artists of the hunter-gatherer era were nomadic , the sculptures they produced were small and lightweight. Fifty-fifty after cultures discovered agricultural methods, such every bit irrigation and animal domestication, artists continued to produce small sculptures. The seated female person effigy below (c. 6000 BCE), likely carved from a single stone,  hails from the prehistoric Samarra civilisation (5500-4800 BCE). Like many prehistoric female figures, the features of this sculpture suggest that information technology was used in fertility rituals . Its breasts are accentuated, and its legs are spread in a position that might resemble a woman in labor. While the artist emphasized areas of the trunk related to reproduction, he or she did not add facial features or feet to the effigy.

Female statuette from Samarra (c. 6000 BCE): A female statuette from Samarra on display at the Louvre Museum.

Uruk Menses

Spirituality and communication are reflected in sculptures dating the Uruk period (4000-3100 BCE) of the late prehistoric era. Scholars believe that the gypsum Uruk trough was used equally part of an offering to Inanna, the goddess of fertility, dear, state of war, and wisdom. In addition to reliefs of animals, reliefs of reed bundles, sacred objects associated with Inanna, adorn the outside of the trough. For these reasons, scholars do not believe the trough was used for agricultural purposes.

Uruk trough (3300-3000 BCE): An Uruk trough on brandish at the British Museum.

Animals, along with forms of writing, also appear on early cylinder seals, which were carved from stones and used to notarize documents. Officials or their scribes rolled the seals on moisture clay tablets as a class of signature. Cylinder seals were also worn as jewelry and take been institute forth with precious metals and stones in the tombs of the elite members of lodge. The trough, cylinder seals, and various other sculptures of the Uruk period serve as examples of the rich narrative imagery that arose during this time.

Uruk-period cylinder seal with stamped clay tablet (4100-3000 BCE): An Uruk-menstruation cylinder seal and stamped dirt tablet featuring monstrous lions and panthera leo-headed eagles, on display at the Louvre Museum.

The Uruk menses besides marked an development in the delineation of the human body, as seen in the Mask of Warka (c. 3000 BCE), named for the present-mean solar day Iraqi city in which it was discovered. This marble "mask" is all that remains of a mixed- media sculpture that also consisted of a wooden body, golden leaf "pilus," inlaid "eyes" and "eyebrows," and jewelry. Similar most sculptures produced during the time, the sculpture was originally painted in an try to make information technology look lifelike.

Uruk Head, also known every bit the Mask of Warka (c. 3000 BCE): The eyes and eyebrows on this Uruk marble head are hollow to arrange the original inlay.

Early Dynastic Catamenia

Sculpture built on older traditions and grew more than complex during the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2350 BCE). Although artists still used clay and stone, copper became the dominant medium. Subject matter focused on spiritual matters, war, and social scenes.

A cylinder seal discovered in the royal tomb of Queen Puabi depicts two registers of a palace feast scene punctuated by cuneiform script, marking a growing complication in the imagery of this grade of notarization. Each register features hieratic scale, in which the queen (upper register) and the king (lower annals) are larger than their subjects.

Cylinder seal and stamped clay fragment from the tomb of Queen Puabi (c. 2600 BCE): The queen sits on the elevation register, while the king sits on the bottom. Each figure is set up autonomously from his or her subjects through hieratic scale.

Another sculpture of note is a mixed-media bull's caput that in one case adorned a ceremonial lyre institute in Puabi'due south tomb in Ur. The head consists of a gold "face," lapis lazuli (a blueish precious stone) "fur," and shell "horns." Although much of the lyre, whose dominant material was forest, disintegrated over time, contemporaneous imagery depicts lyres with similar ornament. Scholars believe that lyres were used in burial ceremonies and that the music that was played held religious significance.

Bull's caput from ceremonial lyre (c. 2600 BCE): This lyre was found in the tomb of queen Pu-Abi. The lapis lazuli, beat, red limestone ornament, and the caput of the bull are original. The bull'southward head is covered with gold. The eyes are lapis lazuli and trounce. The beard and hair are lapis lazuli. A lyre of the same blazon is shown on the Standard of Ur.

Sculptures in human form were also used every bit votive offerings in temples. Amid the all-time known are the Tell Asmar Hoard, a group of 12 sculptures in the round depicting worshipers, priests, and gods. Like the cylinder seal found in Queen Puabi's tomb, the figures in the Tell Asmar Hoard prove hieratic scale. Worshipers, as in the image below, stand up with their artillery in front of their chests and their hands in the position of property offerings. Materials range from alabaster to limestone to gypsum, depending on each figure's significance. Ane mutual feature is the big hollowed out eye sockets, which were once inlaid with stone to make them appear lifelike. The eyes held spiritual significance, particularly that of the gods, which represented awesome otherworldly power.

Votive effigy of a male worshiper from Tell Asmar (2750-2600 BCE): The votive figure—fabricated from alabaster, shell, black limestone, and bitumen—depicts a male worshiper of Enil, a powerful Mesopotamian god.

Akkadian Empire

During the period of the Akkadian Empire (2271-2154 BCE), sculpture of the man form grew increasingly naturalistic, and its bailiwick affair increasingly well-nigh politics and warfare.

A cast bronze portrait head believed to be that of King Sargon combines a naturalistic nose and mouth with stylized eyes, eyebrows, hair, and beard. Although the stylized features boss the sculpture, the level of naturalism was unprecedented.

Head of an Akkadian ruler, probably Sargon (2270-2215 BCE): This portrait combines naturalistic and stylized facial features and was cast using the lost-wax method. The eye sockets were once inlaid.

The Victory Stele of Naram Sin provides an example of the increasingly fierce subject matter in Akkadian fine art, a result of the violent and oppressive climate of the empire. Here, the king is depicted every bit a divine figure, equally signified by his horned helmet. In typical hieratic style, Naram Sin appears larger than his soldiers and his enemies. The king stands among dead or dying enemy soldiers every bit his own troops look on from a lower vantage point. The figures are depicted in high relief to amplify the dramatic significance of the scene. On the right mitt side of the stele, cuneiform script provides narration.

Victory Stele of Naram-Sin (12th century BCE): The king stands in the middle of the stele wearing a horned headpiece. His dead and dying enemies surround him while his own soldiers passively notice.

Babylon and Assyria

The second millennium BCE marks the transition from the Heart Statuary Age to the Late Statuary Age . The most prominent cultures in the aboriginal About Due east during this period were Babylonia and Assyria. Clay was the dominant medium during this time, merely stone was too used. The most common surviving forms of second millennium BCE Mesopotamian art are cylinder seals, relatively small gratis-standing figures, and reliefs of various sizes. These included cheap plaques, both religious and otherwise, of molded pottery for private homes.

Babylonian civilisation somewhat preferred sculpture in the round to reliefs. Depictions of human figures were naturalistic. The Assyrians, on the other mitt, developed a style of large and exquisitely detailed narrative reliefs in painted stone or alabaster. Intended for palaces, these reliefs depict royal activities such every bit battles or hunting. Predominance is given to animal forms, peculiarly horses and lions, which are represented in slap-up detail. Human figures are static and rigid by comparison, but also minutely detailed. The Assyrians produced very little sculpture in the circular with the exception of colossal guardian figures, usually lions and winged beasts, that flanked fortified majestic gateways. While Assyrian artists were profoundly influenced by the Babylonian style, a distinctly Assyrian artistic style began to sally in Mesopotamia around 1500 BCE.

Burney Relief (c. 1800-1750 BCE): The Burney Relief is a Mesopotamian terra cotta plaque in high relief of the Old-Babylonian menstruation, depicting a winged, nude, goddess-similar effigy with bird's talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon supine lions. Apart from its distinctive iconography, the sculpture is noted for its high relief and relatively big size, which suggests that is was used as a cult relief, which makes it a very rare survival from the menstruation.

Architecture in Mesopotamia

Domestic and public architecture in Mesopotamian cultures differed in relative simplicity and complexity. Equally time passed, public architecture grew to monumental heights.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate how Mesopotamian cultures approached domestic and public compages

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Mesopotamian cultures used a diverseness of building materials. While mud brick is the most mutual, stone as well features every bit a structural and decorate chemical element.
• The ziggurat marked a major architectural accomplishment for the Sumerians , likewise as subsequent Mesopotamian cultures.
• Palaces and other public structures were often decorated with glaze or paint, stones, or reliefs .
• Animals and human-animal hybrids feature in the religions of Mesopotamian cultures and were often used equally architectural decoration.

Primal Terms

• alto relief:A sculpture with meaning projection from its background.
• bas reliefs:Sculptures that minimally project from their backgrounds.
• public sphere:The globe outside the dwelling.
• ziggurat:A towering temple, similar to a stepped pyramid, that sat in the center of Mesopotamian city-states in accolade to the local pantheon.
• private sphere:The home, or the domestic realm.
• load-bearing:A form of architecture in which the walls are the construction'south main source of support.
• stacking and piling:A form of load-bearing architecture in which the walls are thickest at the base of operations and grow gradually thinner toward the top.
• pilaster:
  A rectangular column that projects partially from the wall to which information technology is fastened; it gives the advent of a back up, but is only for decoration.

The Mesopotamians regarded "the craft of building" as a divine gift taught to men by the gods, and architecture flourished in the region. A paucity of stone in the region fabricated lord's day baked bricks and dirt the building material of choice. Babylonian compages featured pilasters and columns , besides as frescoes and enameled tiles. Assyrian architects were strongly influenced by the Babylonian style , but used stone as well equally brick in their palaces, which were lined with sculptured and colored slabs of stone instead of being painted. Existing ruins point to load-begetting architecture as the dominant grade of building. However, the invention of the round arch in the general expanse of Mesopotamia influenced the construction of structures like the Ishtar Gate in the sixth century BCE.

Domestic Compages

Mesopotamian families were responsible for the construction of their own houses. While mud bricks and wooden doors comprised the dominant building materials, reeds were besides used in structure. Because houses were load-begetting, doorways were oft the only openings. Sumerian culture observed a rigid partition between the public sphere and the individual sphere , a norm that resulted in a lack of straight view from the street into the domicile. The sizes of individual houses varied, just the general design consisted of smaller rooms organized around a large central room. To provide a natural cooling effect, courtyards became a common characteristic in the Ubaid period and persist into the domestic architecture of nowadays-day Iraq.

Ziggurats

One of the most remarkable achievements of Mesopotamian architecture was the development of the ziggurat, a massive structure taking the class of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels, with a shrine or temple at the peak. Like pyramids, ziggurats were built by stacking and piling . Ziggurats were not places of worship for the general public. Rather, but priests or other authorized religious officials were allowed inside to tend to cult statues and make offerings . The first surviving ziggurats date to the Sumerian civilisation in the quaternary millennium BCE, simply they continued to be a popular architectural form in the late third and early second millennium BCE likewise .

Chogha Zanbil ziggurat: The Chogha Zanbil ziggurat was built in 1250 BC by Untash-Napirisha, the rex of Elam, to honor the Elamite god Inshushinak.

The image beneath is an artist's reconstruction of how ziggurats might take looked in their heyday. Human figures appear to illustrate the massive calibration of these structures. This impressive height and width would non accept been possible without the use of ramps and pulleys.

An artist's reconstruction of a ziggurat: Like most Mesopotamian architecture, ziggurats were composed of sun-baked bricks, which were less durable than their oven-baked counterparts. Thus, buildings had to be reconstructed on a regular ground, oft on the foundations of recently deteriorated structures, which acquired cities to become increasingly elevated. Lord's day-broiled bricks remained the dominant edifice material through the Babylonian and early Assyrian empires.

Political Architecture

The exteriors of public structures like temples and palaces featured decorative elements such as brilliant paint, gold, leaf, and enameling. Some elements, such equally colored stones and terra cotta panels, served a twofold purpose of decoration and structural support, which strengthened the buildings and delayed their deterioration.

Between the thirteenth and tenth centuries BCE, the Assyrians replaced lord's day-baked bricks with more durable rock and masonry. Colored rock and bas reliefs replaced pigment as ornamentation. Fine art produced nether the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE), Sargon II (722-705 BCE), and Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE) inform u.s.a. that reliefs evolved from simple and vibrant to naturalistic and restrained over this time span.

From the Early Dynastic Menstruation (2900-2350 BCE) to the Assyrian Empire (25th century-612 BCE), palaces grew in size and complication. Even so, fifty-fifty early palaces were very large and ornately decorated to distinguish themselves from domestic architecture. Because palaces housed the purple family and everyone who attended to them, palaces were often bundled like modest cities, with temples and sanctuaries , equally well every bit locations to inter the dead. As with private homes, courtyards were important features of palaces for both utilitarian and formalism purposes.

By the fourth dimension of the Assyrian empire, palaces were decorated with narrative reliefs on the walls and outfitted with their ain gates. The gates of the Palace of Dur-Sharrukin, occupied by Sargon Ii, featured monumental alto reliefs of a mythological guardian figure chosen a lamassu (also known every bit a shedu), which had the head of a human, the trunk of a balderdash or panthera leo, and enormous wings. Lamassu effigy in the visual art and literature from most of the aboriginal Mesopotamian world, going as far back as ancient Sumer (settled c. 5500 BCE) and continuing guard at the palace of Persepolis (550-330 BCE).

Lamassu: This is only one example of how a lamassu would appear in Mesopotamian fine art. Other sculptures wear conical caps, face the forepart, or have the bodies of lions. In literature, some lamassu assumed female course.

Although the Romans oft receive credit for the round arch, this structural system actually originated during ancient Mesopotamian times. Where typical load-bearing walls are not potent enough to have many windows or doorways, round arches blot more force per unit area, assuasive for larger openings and improved airflow. The reconstruction of Dur-Sharrukin shows that the round arch was being used as entryways by the eighth century BCE.

Palace of Dur-Sharrukin: Round arches tin be found in the cardinal portal, too as in each window on the right and left.

Perhaps the best known surviving example of a round arch is in the Ishtar Gate, which was office of the Processional Way in the urban center of Babylon. The gate, now in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, was lavishly busy with lapis lazuli complemented by blueish glazed brick. Elsewhere on the gate and its connecting walls were painted floral motifs and bas reliefs of animals that were sacred to Ishtar, the goddess of fertility and war.

Ishtar Gate (c. 575 BCE): The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

The photograph above shows the immense scale of the gate. The photograph below shows the detail of a relief of a bull from the gate's wall.

Detail of bull relief on Ishtar Gate: An aurochs, or bull, higher up a flower ribbon.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/mesopotamia/