Fragment of an Ivory Plaque with a Braid Pattern
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A thin sliver of ivory, seven centimetres long and under two wide, is incised with a braid, three strands twisted over and under each other. Both ends are lost. The pattern was laid out with a compass, whose pin marks can still be found under magnification, and one of the strands keeps a brown tint, showing that the strip was coloured. It is a border, the kind of running ornament that framed the figured plaques displayed around it, and it reminds you that the furniture was a complete decorative scheme, not a set of separate pictures.
Strips like this edged panels on beds, chairs and boxes, and were made in quantity by the same Phoenician and Syrian workshops that carved the sphinxes and the cow and calf. This fragment was found in the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, the Assyrian provincial residence at ancient Hadatu in northern Syria, during the excavations of 1928 led by François Thureau-Dangin. It came to the Louvre through the partage of 1929, along with the rest of the French share of the finds.
Did You Know? Under a magnifying glass the tiny pin marks of the carver's compass can still be seen where he laid out the braid.
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