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| The great royal audience hall in ancient Persian palaces. |
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| Capable of warding off evil. |
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| The chamber at the center of an ancient temple; in a classical temple, the room in which the cult statue usually stood. (Greek naos). |
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| An independent, self-governing city that rules the surrounding countryside. |
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| Literally, "wedge-shaped." In ancient Mesopotatmia a system of writing that was comprised of wedge-shaped characters. The epic of Gilgamesh was composed in cuneiform. |
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| A cylindrical piece of stone usually about an inch or so in height, decorated with a design in intaglio (incised), so that a raised pattern is left when the seal is rolled over soft clay. |
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| Usually, the front of a building; also the other sides when they are emphasized architecturally. |
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| The apparent visual contraction of an object so that it appears to recede in space. |
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| The part of the entablature between the architrave and the cornice; also, any sulptured or ornamented band in a building, on furniture, etc. |
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| A thin coating applied to pottery to seal and decorate the surface; it may be colored, transparent, or opaque, and glossy or matte. |
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| Bricks painted and then kiln fired to fuse the color with the baked clay. |
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| A composition or arrangement that is symmetrical on either side of a (often larger) central figure. |
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| An artistic convention in which greater size indicates greater importance. |
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| IN Assyrian art, guardians in the form of man-headed winged bulls. |
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| A rich, ultramarine, semiprecious stone used for carving and as a source for pigment. |
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| From the Greek for "land between two rivers," the two rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates. |
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| The shaping or fashioning of three-dimensional forms in a soft material, such as clay. |
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| Simplified pictures that stand for words or ideas; an early form of writing. |
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| One of a series of superimposed bands in a pictorial narrative, or the particular levels on whcih motifs are placed (also called a frieze). |
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| A carved stone slab used to mark graves and/or commemorate historical events. |
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| A needlelike tool used in engraving and incising. |
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| A gift of gratitude or an offering made to a deity; often in the form of a small statuette. |
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| In Mesopotamian architecture- a high (monumental) platform for a temple, often wit ha bent-axis approach. |
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