wholly free from this all but universal defect, while the pose of both arms and legs is exceptionally natural and singularly true to life. They are armed with spears of the same type as those used by the beleaguered army, but their shields are round in contradistinction to the oblong shields of the enemy, and they are girded with short swords. Their clothing and helmets are of a frequently recurring type, while both of them wear armlets and one of them wears a plain bracelet on his left wrist. Sargon was succeeded in 705 B.C. by his famous son Sennacherib, the principal event of whose reign was probably the destruction of Babylon in 689 B.C. But the name of Sennacherib is famous rather on account of his close relations with the kingdom of Judah, and the unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah, than for the conquests which he made, considerable as they were. The excavation of his palace at Nineveh has led to the discovery of a large number of bas-reliefs, many of which had been fractured as well as damaged by fire when the city was sacked by the combined forces of the Medes and the Babylonians about 609 B.C. For the most part they illustrate the campaigns undertaken by Sennacherib. What is noticeable at once in the bas-reliefs of this king is their complexity, as contrasted with the simplicity of those of Ashur-naṣir-pal. We have already observed that entire scenes are sometimes portrayed upon the bas-reliefs of the last-named monarch, though more often the relief is monopolized by two or three large and striking figures, one of which generally represents the king, but by Sennacherib’s time what had hitherto been the exception now becomes the rule, and the bas-reliefs of this king are practically all scenic in their effect and most elaborate in their composition. This exaggerated complexity is due not so much to the variety of subjects treated in each relief, as to the ignorance of perspective on the part of the artist, for the treatment of even a limited number of subjects or objects within the scope of a single picture demands that these objects be seen and represented in perspective, and if that demand is not met, confusion worse confounded is the inevitable result of the artist’s abortive attempt. This confusion is seen to perfection, if the “_oxymoron_” may be allowed, in the reliefs which adorned the palace walls of Sennacherib king of Assyria. A portion of one of the most instructive of these sculptured slabs is reproduced in Fig. 30. [Illustration: FIG. 30.—Bas-relief of Sennacherib. (After Layard.)]