Ancient ivory - masterpieces of the assyrian empire

A beautifully produced guide to the Nimrud Ivories, one of the world's most spectacular collections of ancient ivory, now largely lost as a result of conflict in the Middle East.

Ivory is a wonderful material: tactile, beautiful, workable into many different forms and the strongest in the animal kingdom. Unfortunately for the elephant, it has been highly prized, by virtue of its rarity and the difficulty of acquiring it, from the Palaeolithic to the present day - indeed the Syrian elephant was hunted to extinction. However, it was during the early first millennium bc - the 'Age of Ivory' - that literally thousands of carved ivories found their way to the Assyrian capital city of Kalhu, or modern Nimrud, in northern Iraq. The majority were not made there, in the heart of ancient Assyria, but arrived as gift, tribute or booty gathered by the Assyrian kings from the small neighbouring states of the ancient Middle Eastern world, with the ivory itself probably sourced from the African elephant.