Openwork furniture plaque with a rearing goat

In this fragmentary, openwork plaque, a rearing goat balances its forelegs on the intertwining tendrils of a stylized plant, nibbling on the leaves at the top. This piece was found in a large storeroom at Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud that was probably used to store booty and tribute collected by the Assyrians while on military campaign. A rectangular tenon preserved below the lower edge suggests that it may have been fitted into a frame, likely as part of a piece of furniture. The goat’s large eye, which bears traces of blue paste into which a colored glass or semiprecious stone inlay would have been set, is emphasized by incisions along the brow, as are its snout, ears, beard, mane, and ribs. The preserved fragment of vegetation emerging from behind the goat’s lower back suggests that the stylized plant depicted between its legs continued upwards and framed the goat in a vegetal landscape. While the goat’s large, heavy body and energetic pose are characteristic of North Syrian art, the use of openwork technique is more commonly associated with Phoenician style ivories. It is possible that the plaque instead belongs to the South Syrian style, which occupies an intermediate position between the two.

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.