Furniture plaque carved in relief with winged figures, locust, and monkey

This carved 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 is one of a group of plaques depicting unusual imagery. Here, two winged figures stand with arms raised to their sides, facing each other. The plaque was damaged in antiquity so the figure at left is difficult to identify, but appears to be human in form. At right, a figure with a human body and ram’s head wears a headdress, the ends of which lie on the shoulders, and an elaborately patterned skirt belted at the waist and drawn back to expose one leg. The two figures hold snakes in their upraised hands. Between them, a huge locust and a monkey stand on their hind legs, facing the winged figures. Carved ivory pieces such as this were widely used in the production of elite furniture during the early first millennium B.C. They were often inlaid into a wooden frame using joinery techniques and glue, and could be overlaid with gold foil or inlaid to create a dazzling effect of gleaming surfaces and bright colors. The imagery on this plaque and others found with it is hard to interpret, because it is so unusual and no parallels can be found on other carved ivories from Nimrud. It may depict local myths or rituals that were characteristic of one of the Syrian city-states that were defeated in battle by the Assyrians, and may have come to Nimrud as booty from the city after its conquest.

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.