Ivory Plaque with a Cow and Calf, Third Version
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A third cow with her calf faces left on a plaque ten centimetres long, the thickest of the set at just over a centimetre. The carver used the same design as the neighbouring pieces, a standing cow turning her head to the suckling calf, but each plaque was cut by hand and the proportions differ slightly: compare the curve of the horns and the set of the legs across the group. Here no gilding or inlay survives, so the modelling has to work on its own, and it does, in the swell of the cow's belly and the calf's straining neck.
Furniture in the Assyrian palaces was covered with rows of such plaques, and repeating a motif around a bed frame or the back of a chair gave the piece a rhythm like a frieze. This example came from room fourteen of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, ancient Hadatu, in northern Syria, excavated in 1928 by François Thureau-Dangin. The Louvre received it through the partage of 1929. The ivories may have been made on the Phoenician coast or in Damascus.
Did You Know? Three near-identical cows in this case were carved separately by hand, so no two are quite the same.
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