Nimrud Ivories Research Articles

Old habits die hard: Writing the excavation and dispersal history of Nimrud

ABSTRACTThe archaeological site of Nimrud in northern Iraq is triply famous in the history of Middle Eastern fieldwork: first as one of the places where young explorer Austen Henry Layard uncovered the physical remains of the Biblical city of ‘Nineveh’ in the 1840s; then as the setting for Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie’s large-scale project to uncover the Assyrian city of Kalhu in the 1940s and 50s; and most recently, as one of the high-profile targets of ISIS’ cultural heritage destruction in the region in early 2015.In 2013–15 I ran an AHRC-funded research project on the history of excavations at Nimrud, the dispersal of finds from the site to museums, and the histories that have been written from that evidence for a website (http://oracc.org/nimrud). One major aim was to provide open-licensed material for re-use by museums holding Nimrud artefacts in their collections, but which do not have specialist curatorial staff to research and explain them. In writing that material it proved surprisingly hard to move away from the well-worn anecdotes of popular narratives that constructed unreliable object habits: heroic Layard’s derring-do in discovering Biblical, imperial monuments; doughty Agatha’s improvised cleaning of the Nimrud ivories with her face-cream; ISIS’s barbaric mission to destroy civilisation. In this paper, I explore the strategies we developed to write a deeper history of the site and its finds, and reflect on our relative successes and failures.

EDITORIAL

Nimrud has been described as “not the largest of the ancient capitals of Assyria, but [. . .] undoubtedly one of the most beautiful archaeological sites in northern Iraq”. When Layard first visited it in 1840 “[t]he spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile meadows, which stretched around it, were covered with flowers of every hue [. . .] My curiosity had been greatly excited, and from that time I formed the design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in my power, these singular ruins” (Layard 1849). Five years later he began excavations, discovering two royal palaces and some of the famous Nimrud ivories. In his second season, the first of the famous colossal winged bulls and lions came to light, standing at the entrance to the temple of Ninurta. Thus was Nimrud brought back to public gaze, after more than two and a half thousand years of neglect.

Glass Inlays and Nimrud Ivories

In the 1989 British Museum excavations at Nimrud four small glass plaques were found that were published in a recent volume of Iraq (Curtis, Collon and Green 1993: 15–16, Figs. 14: 5–6 and 16). They came from Room T20 in Fort Shalmaneser, and were found in a deposit that predated a reconstruction of the building probably in the reign of Esarhaddon. The plaques are almost square, measuring about 1·4 × 1·55 cm and 0·15 cm thick (Figs. 1–2). They are made of blue glass and have recessed designs showing six-petalled rosettes in glass of a different colour. Where this inlaid glass survives it is now white but may originally have been yellow. One of the plaques has a small hole right through the centre. It was suggested then that originally these glass plaques would have been mounted in bronze frames and would have been hammered on to various types of furniture as decoration. Further research, however, indicates that it may be possible to suggest a more specific use for these plaques.A survey of glass plaques with rosettes reveals that there were two different types in circulation in the ancient Near East. First, there are large blue glass plaques where the rosette design is recessed into the surface and filled with what is now (where it survives) opaque white glass. A characteristic of plaques made in this way is that the inlaid rosettes are visible only from one side. Barag comments that “the petals were probably pressed into the blue matrix while both were in a viscous state” (1985: 72), but in the view of von Saldern (1966: 632–3) “the shallow depressions in the tiles to receive the white fillings were cut [my italics] into the blue glass.”

Carved Ivories from Til Barsib

Twelve carved ivories were discovered at Tell Ahmar (ancient Til Barsib) in Syria from excavations conducted by the University of Melbourne. The majority of the ivories come from the destruction debris of the earliest occupation phase of a large domestic structure (building C1). This destruction level can be dated to the second half of the seventh century B.C. on the evidence of cuneiform tablets discovered in the same level. The Til Barsib ivories can be assigned to various schools of Syrian ivory carving and find their closest parallels among the Nimrud ivories. Their presence in a domestic structure, as late as the second half of the seventh century, raises questions about the time when ivories ceased to be carved in Syria and about the social context in which they were used.

Recent British Museum Excavations in Assyria

It is a great honour for me to be asked to give the Richard Barnett memorial lecture. I knew Richard Barnett well, and had the privilege of working with him at the British Museum for three years before his retirement. He was a great source of inspiration, and I and many others owe him a considerable debt of gratitude. I have chosen as my subject recent British Museum excavations in Assyria, partly because I believe this would have been of some slight interest to Dr Barnett. Both the British Museum and Assyria were close to his heart. He worked in the Museum for more than 40 years, and from 1955 to 1974 was Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities. Throughout this time Assyria was a special interest, and Dr Barnett did some of his most important work on Nimrud ivories, the Assyrian reliefs and the Balawat Gates. Inevitably, the role of the British Museum in making these pioneering discoveries in the nineteenth century held a particular fascination for him.

The Nimrud Ivories, 1: The Flame and Frond School

The volume of ivories found at Nimrud is overwhelming. Nevertheless, this very quantity presents us with unique opportunities to investigate the ivory trade in the early first millennium B.C. It allows us to gather together groups of similar styles and thus, if it can be accepted that a coherent style-group was probably the output of a specific “school” of carving, to define the production of different schools. The principal purpose of this article is to try to reconstruct the output of one of these schools, the flame and frond school, which belongs to the North Syrian tradition of ivory-carving. After bringing together some of its products, another aim is to suggest the school's original location and the time of its floruit.Only a minority of the ivories found at Nimrud were in the easily recognizable Assyrian style, best known from the wall reliefs. The remainder were carved in a variety of styles and techniques and were almost certainly brought to Nimrud as booty or tribute. As early as 1912 Poulsen suggested that these ivories could be divided into two groups, the Phoenician and the North Syrian. The criteria he used to distinguish them were the absence of Egyptian elements on North Syrian ivories and the relationship between North Syrian ivories and reliefs found at Syrian sites such as Carchemish, Zincirli, Maras and Tell Halaf.

Sir Max Mallowan: The Nimrud ivories. London: British Museum Publications Ltd, 1978. 63 pp., 70 pls. £5.00 (cased); £3.00 (paper).

Sir Max Mallowan: The Nimrud ivories. London: British Museum Publications Ltd, 1978. 63 pp., 70 pls. £5.00 (cased); £3.00 (paper).

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

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.

(R. D.) Barnett A catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories with other examples of Ancient Near Eastern Ivories in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1957. Pp. 252, with 132 plates and 92 text figures. £8 8s. 0d.

(R. D.) Barnett A catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories with other examples of Ancient Near Eastern Ivories in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1957. Pp. 252, with 132 plates and 92 text figures. £8 8s. 0d. - Volume 79

A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories with other Examples of Ancient Near Eastern Ivories in the British Museum. By R. D. Barnett.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsA Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories with other Examples of Ancient Near Eastern Ivories in the British Museum. By R. D. Barnett.Edith PoradaEdith Porada Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 63, Number 1January 1959 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/502119 Copyright © 1959 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A catalogue of the Nimrud ivories, with other examples of ancient Near Eastern ivories in the British Museum. By R. D. Barnett. 8½ × 11½. Pp. 252 + 132 pls. + 92 figs. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1957.

A catalogue of the Nimrud ivories, with other examples of ancient Near Eastern ivories in the British Museum. By R. D. Barnett. 8½ × 11½. Pp. 252 + 132 pls. + 92 figs. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1957.

The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalḫu), 1949-1950 Ivories from the N. W. Palace

The most important of the rich and varied pieces of carved ivory discovered at Nimrud during 1949 and 1950 have already been illustrated and discussed in previous numbers of this Journal.1 The photographs which accompany this article, Plates XII-XVIII, illustrate the remainder of what still needed to be published from those two seasons : anything omitted is probably too much mutilated or fragmentary to be worth describing. This material falls into two groups. Plates XII-XV represent the remains of the ivories from Layard's dumps in chamber V of the N.W. Palace, and were found in 1949 together with the beautiful ivory cow shown in Iraq, XIII, Pt. 1, Plate I, Nos. 2, 3 ; Plates XVI-XV?1 represent the few pieces still unpublished from the collection of ivories found in the S.E. wing of the N.W. Palace during 1950. It will be seen that none of these pieces adds substantially to our knowledge of the Nimrud ivories, for none of them is different in style from anything previously discovered, but for the sake of completeness they have deserved illustration. Nor should it be forgotten that some of them may perhaps join with other fragments brought home by Layard a century ago and now in the British Museum. However, it is also evident that each element is but a small fraction of a very much larger whole, and such joins as could be made would not be likely to alter the picture of the already known themes which composed the repertory ?f the ancient ivory work. It may be hoped, none the Jess, that at some future time such disjecta membra will be reassembled, however little they may avail for the complete restoration of what was long ago for the most part destroyed. AH o? the ivory fragments as well as the glass and gold foil shown on Plates XII-XV were found in Layard's filling which overlay the floor of chamber V {cf. Fig. 1 for the location of this room in the N.W. Palace); a few mutilated pieces were also discovered in room W. There can be no certainty about their original position, since they come from earth which the workmen had shovelled back again on Layard's orders for the purpose of protecting the rooms after he had finished digging them. But it is most probable that the majority had in fact come from room V where Layard himself said that he found them : the passage in which he describes the discovery is of interest, cf. Nineveh and its Remains, Vol. 11, p. 8/. The chamber V is remarkable for the discovery, near the entrance a, of a number of ivory ornaments of considerable beauty and interest. These ivories, when uncovered, adhered so firmly to the soil,

The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalḫu), 1949-1950. Ivories from the N. W. Palace

In the preceding number of this journal we described how in the Spring of 1949 we returned to the site of the famous N.W. Palace of Assur-naṣir-pal and set to work in chamber V where, more than a century ago, Layard had first unearthed the famous collection of Nimrud ivories. There, and in the adjacent chamber W, we found hundreds of mutilated fragments, most of them undecorated, which the workmen had cast aside and thrown back when the chambers were refilled with the soil that had come out of them. None the less our return to these rooms was worth while, for in the debris of V we found two unfinished plaques, Plate VI, 3, 4, which indicated that some of the ivories must actually have been carved at Calah, and in the same room, on an undug patch of soil about one metre above the level of Assur-naṣir-pal's pavement, we found the beautiful figure of the cow suckling its calf, Plate I, 2, 3. These three figures are all that we can illustrate here from Layard's excavations: the remainder was found by us in the newly discovered S.E. wing of the Palace which we began digging in the Spring of 1950. With these three exceptions, the rest of the collection comes from rooms FF, GG north of OO, HH, OO, and QQ, see text Fig. 1, and in every case the pieces were found lying in confusion on a pavement level which can with certainty be attributed to the reign of King Sargon, thanks to the fortunate discovery in room HH of a clay docket bearing the name of a limmu who is known to have held office in the year 715 B.C. Most of the pieces, including the Bull, ND. 762, and the remarkable head, ND. 763, Plates II–V, were found in room HH; see Plate X for a picture of the N.W. corner of that room and the objects as they appeared at the time of discovery.

The Nimrud Ivories and the Art of the Phoenicians

The Nimrud Ivories and the Art of the Phoenicians