Cloisonné furniture or cosmetic box plaque with three frontal heads

Three frontal heads are carved in low relief on this fragmentary, convex ivory plaque. This piece was found in what has been identified as the royal residency of Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud that was probably used to store tribute and booty collected by the Assyrians while on military campaign. During the final defeat of Assyria at the end of the seventh century B.C., the royal complexes at Nimrud were sacked and burned, and the plaque was likely blackened through exposure to fire at this time. Originally, it was probably used to decorate a circular cosmetic box or as an inlay for a wooden piece of furniture. There are two dowel holes cut longitudinally into the ivory, one at the upper edge and a second at the lower edge. These holes would have aided in securing this plaque to a frame by means of dowels. The large, flat, frontal faces, cow’s ears, and distinct wig, which is parted at the center and falls tightly around the face in large curls, are drawn from Egyptian depictions of Hathor, an Egyptian goddess associated with joy, music, love, and beauty. The Egyptianizing imagery is embellished with the cloisonné technique, in which small cloisons (walled cells) cut into the ivory would have been inlaid with colored glass or semiprecious stones. This technique is characteristic of Phoenician ivories. Traces of the original inlay survive in the hair of the head in the center of this piece.

Built by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II, the palaces and storerooms of Nimrud housed thousands of pieces of carved ivory. Most of the ivories served as furniture inlays or small precious objects such as boxes. While some of them were carved in the same style as the large Assyrian reliefs lining the walls of the Northwest Palace, the majority of the ivories display images and styles related to the arts of North Syria and the Phoenician city-states. Phoenician style ivories are distinguished by their use of imagery related to Egyptian art, such as sphinxes and figures wearing pharaonic crowns, and the use of elaborate carving techniques such as openwork and colored glass inlay. North Syrian style ivories tend to depict stockier figures in more dynamic compositions, carved as solid plaques with fewer added decorative elements. However, some pieces do not fit easily into any of these three styles. Most of the ivories were probably collected by the Assyrian kings as tribute from vassal states, and as booty from conquered enemies, while some may have been manufactured in workshops at Nimrud. The ivory tusks that provided the raw material for these objects were almost certainly from African elephants, imported from lands south of Egypt, although elephants did inhabit several river valleys in Syria until they were hunted to extinction by the end of the eighth century B.C.