Hamath and Nimrud: Shell Fragments from Hamath and the Provenance of the Nimrud Ivories

Abstract

It must be very unusual in the history of archaeology for a site to have a history of excavation in two stages, separated by over a century. Ur, Babylon and Susa were touched, it is true, by early workers in the Mesopotamian field; but their work there had little to compare with that of our generations. Yet the brilliantly successful excavations of Professor Mallowan and his staff of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq have repeatedly carried us back to the first beginnings of Assyriology, in particular by their great finds of ivories to that second day of Layard's excavations, the 9th of November, 1845, when Layard's men sank their spades into the soil of the North-West Palace and brought out the first of the ‘Nimrud Ivories’. These finds of ivories by Layard have now all been published in full and discussed at length, and in the publication I put forward the view that the work of decorating with them perhaps furniture or rooms was originally carried out by Phoenician and Hamathite craftsmen for the ruler of Hamath, Iau-bi’di, and that it was Sargon who carried off the ivories to Nimrud when he destroyed Hamath and swept away its wealth as booty in 719 B.C.