Furniture plaque with figure in relief

This ivory plaque was found in a storage room in Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud that was used to store booty and tribute collected by the Assyrians while on military campaign. It depicts a standing male figure, bearded and with shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He wears what are probably two long garments, each with a fringed hem: an undertunic with short sleeves that reaches to his ankles, and a robe over this with decoration at the shoulder, held closed by his left hand which is pressed against his chest. His right arm is held down against his side, showing a thick bracelet at the wrist. The plaque was found with several others carved in a similar style, in which plump, stocky figures are shown facing forward and depicted with rounded cheeks, vividly staring eyes, and similar hairstyles. The group of related plaques may have originally been part of the same item of furniture. Carved ivory pieces such as this were widely used in the production of elite furniture and luxury objects during the early first millennium B.C., and could be overlaid with gold foil or inlaid to create a dazzling effect of gleaming surfaces and bright colors.

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.