Inlays

These three pieces of carved shell take the form of a slightly curved disk decorated with a cutout crescent and smaller disk. Traces of a silver band are visible around the outer rim of one piece. Found in a royal building at Nimrud that was used to store luxury goods, these disks may have been inlaid as decoration into elaborately decorated furniture made of carved ivory. Ivory plaques, strips, and other furniture elements were often inlaid into a wooden frame using joinery techniques and glue, and could be overlaid with gold foil or inlaid with pieces such as these disks to create dazzling contrasts in color and luster. When the royal buildings at Nimrud were sacked during the fall of Assyria in 614 and 612 B.C., looters stripped the gold inlay from the ivory furniture and left the broken pieces behind, so how these disks were originally used is not known.