Plaque carved in relief with sphinx trampling figure

This curved, trapezoidal 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 human-headed winged sphinx walking to the right, trampling a collapsing figure who seems to be nude, and who raises his head to face right while lifting his left arm, palm facing outward. Three of the sphinx’s legs are those of a lion, as is typical, while unusually the left front appears to be a human arm; the sphinx places its human hand atop of head of the collapsed figure it tramples. The sphinx wears an Egyptian-style wig and broad collar necklace, with a headdress in the shape of a compressed disc. Traces of two papyrus plants appear at the left and right edges of the scene, and a raised plain border runs along the top and bottom. 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. This piece is one of many elaborately carved ivories with motifs adapted from Egyptian art that have been attributed to Phoenician workshops, as Phoenician art shows strong Egyptian influence. It was found with many other small curved trapezoidal plaques, suggesting that these pieces were originally fitted together to create ring-shaped objects that were wider at the bottom than the top. If equipped with bases and lids, these could have been used as boxes, or alternatively they could have served as stands for bowls or round-bottomed goblets.

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.