Page 220 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA
second millennium b.c., pointing to a continuity which is absent in sculpture. But, then,
there was not at any time a tradition of stone-work in the Levant, while the carving of
ivory and engraving of metal were old-established crafts which, apparently, the migra-
tion of the Peoples of the Sea did not destroy.

Ivories

There arc two finds of ivories which belong to the ninth century B.c. One comes from
die south-east palace at Nimrud,135 the odier from Tell Halaf, from a tomb ante-dating
the Assyrian occupation of 808 b.c. The most characteristic pieces on both sites are fine-
featured heads of women (Plate 167, d, e, andr). The majority are from one to two inches
high, but one found at Nimrud measures more than five inches.136 All of them differ in
specific respects137 from the heads of the later style of which the most beautiful one is
a quite exceptional piece, measuring six and a half inches in height.138 Sometimes two
figures of naked women are joined back to back (Plate i66a) to serve as an element in
the decoration of a piece of furniture, or perhaps as a handle for a fan, a mirror, or some
other object.139 There are great differences in quality between pieces from the same site,
but the best are very good indeed. It is a remarkable instance of the persistence of habits or
dress in the East that the flat caps worn by these women are practically the same as those
on the Megiddo ivories (Plate 151, a and b; Figure 75). These caps are not shown on As­
syrian monuments, and confirm the Levantine origin of the ivories. Some of these show,
moreover, Egyptian features. The fan handle of plate i66b displays four men holding
hands. Clothed in Egyptian costumes, they stand round a pillar with a composite flower-
and-palm-leafcapital. Another piece of ivory, the frontlet of ahorse,140 shows an Egyptian-

looking woman holding a papyrus flower and standing under a winged sun-disk with
two uraei, strictly conforming to the Egyptian pattern. The woman wears, however,
the hair ornament which we also see in plate 170B; and this is not Egyptian.
With these pieces were a number of round unguent boxes in which Egyptian in­
fluence is much less evident (Plate 167, b and c). In fact, it is only apparent in the
wigs, and in some of the costumes of the figures. It has been supposed that they were
made in north Syria rather than in Phoenicia.141 This may be so; it is curious that the
flame-like design on the thighs of the sphinxes of figure 92, and of die Hon of plate
167c, occurs also at Tell Halaf (Plate 159A).142 The manner of carving the boxes also

Figure 92. Ivory box, from Nimrud
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