Cut from Mosul gypsum alabaster for the citadel gates of Sargon II, the lamassu are colossal human-headed winged bulls — five-legged guardians that stride when seen from the side and stand guard head-on. This system takes their weathered buff-gray stone, dense cuneiform banding, and chiselled musculature as its material. Color stays close to aged carved gypsum: never the fresh-cut white, never cream. Type is monumental Latin capital married to real cuneiform script, and surviving pigment appears only as restrained ochre, red-brown, and Egyptian-blue traces — the way the paint actually survives on the stone today.