Plaque

This long, narrow strip of ivory is broken at both ends, but enough remains of the decoration to identify it as a scene depicting a royal banquet. At left, a beardless attendant gestures to a stand holding three pots, perhaps serving vessels for the meal; he may be waving a fan over the pots to keep insects away. Two similar figures stand to the right, armed with bows, and face the back of the seated king, who is identified by his distinctive hat—a fez-like cap topped by a small cone. The king is bearded and seated on a throne with a high back. He holds a bowl on the fingertips of his right hand and faces another beardless attendant, who holds a long-handled cup or dipper and waves a whisk toward the king. The attendant stands behind a three-legged table covered with a cloth. To the right is another group of banqueters, this time arranged in two seated pairs consisting of a bearded and a beardless figure, which face each other across another three-legged table. Behind the table stands another beardless attendant, who hands something to the left-hand pair. The bearded figure in this pair wears a diadem and holds a bowl with the fingertips of his right hand, like the king. The diadem and gesture suggest that he has a higher status than the other figures in his group, and should probably be identified as the crown prince. At the right edge of the strip, part of an additional banqueting group can be seen, although the damage to the piece makes it difficult to make out their features and attributes. One of the figures raises a cup or bowl. One leg of a three-legged table can be seen right before the break. Carved ivory pieces such as this were widely used in the production of elite furniture during the early first millennium B.C., and were often inlaid into a wooden frame using joinery techniques and glue. Ivories carved in this style, in which scenes similar to those depicted in the stone reliefs decorating the walls of the Assyrian palaces are represented using an incised technique, are thought to have been made in Assyrian workshops for the use of the royal court. This piece was found in Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud, in an area probably used as a royal residence. Most of the carved ivory found in the royal residence area at Fort Shalmaneser was carved in the Assyrian style, suggesting that the Assyrian court primarily used ivory furniture carved in this style.

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.