Fragment of an Ivory Plaque: Head of a Cow
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
Only the head of a cow survives from this plaque, a piece four centimetres high. The animal faced right and turned her head back, so what you see is the muzzle, the eye and the base of the horns, cut off where the neck met the body. Even in this scrap the carver's hand is clear: the nostril is drilled, the eye socket is hollowed for an inlay now lost, and the line of the jaw is drawn with one confident stroke. It belonged to another cow and calf group like those displayed beside it.
The fragment was found not in the main room but in the courtyard of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, ancient Hadatu in northern Syria, which suggests that the furniture was already broken up when the building was abandoned or looted. Assyrian provincial palaces held ivory furniture obtained as tribute from the Phoenician and Aramaean cities of the west. It was excavated in 1928 by François Thureau-Dangin's mission and came to the Louvre through the partage of 1929.
Did You Know? The head was found in the courtyard, far from the room where the other cows lay, a clue that the ivory furniture was smashed before the building fell.
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