ELLEN KENNY: Hi, I'm Ellen Kenney. I'm a Research Associate in the Department of Islamic Art. And we're here looking at a wooden panel, which dates to the Fatimid period, and comes from the Fatimid capital of Cairo. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that wood was used fairly widely in the architecture of the Fatimid period, even though it would have been a rather expensive commodity, and often had to be imported. So I think we have to think of wood in the context of Fatimid Cairo as a luxury material, rather than something sort of mundane. I love this panel; the way these horse heads sort of morph into an arabesque - almost like a seahorse. And then the arabesque morphs into the spiraling background. It's just a delightful piece. So you have on the one hand this very deep carving, making a real contrast of light and dark… And then at another level a lot of the detail like the serration on the arabesque leaves, and… the decoration on the bridal, and the horse's mane and eyes are very gently etched in a way into the wood. And so ultimately this gives us… a real sense of richness, but with both this sort of gentle etching and the deep carving in combination.