’Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age’: Met’s Description

choi

Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept 22, 2014-Jan 4, 2015.
metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2014/assyria-to-iberia

Note: Under the heading “More about the Exhibition” are four subjects.
(a) Assyria's Expansion: “One of the first monumental works on display—a rare surviving example of Assyrian sculpture in the round—is a statue of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r[eign]. 883–859 bc).”
(i) round (n): "in the round: in full sculptured form unattached to a background"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/round
(ii) in the round: "(Of sculpture) standing free with all sides shown, rather than carved in relief against a ground"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/in-the-round
(iii) round (n): "in the round: designed to stand alone and able to be looked at from all sides <sculpture in the round>"
www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/round_13

(b) “Phoenician merchants enjoyed a monopoly on trade of the precious purple dye obtained from murex shells (‘Phoenician’ derives from the ancient Greek word for ‘purple’).”

murex
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murex
(a genus; section 4 Human use)
(c) “And the Phoenicians introduced their phonetic alphabet—the precursor of the alphabet used today throughout the western hemisphere—across the Mediterranean.”

Phoenician alphabet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet