Other great buildings had been the temple, which tended to be monumental complexes preceded by an avenue of sphinxes and obelisks. Temples used pylons and trapezoid walls with hypaethros and hypostyle halls and shrines. Another type of temple is the rock temple, in the type of a hypogeum, present in Abu Simbel and Deir el-Bahari. During the early 1st millennium BC, after the Akkadians, an empire referred to as Assyria came to dominate the whole of Middle East, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. Assyrian art is greatest known for its detailed stone reliefs, depicting scenes of …