Ivory Plaque with a Cow Suckling Her Calf, Facing Left
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A cow faces left with her head turned back to the calf drinking under her belly. The scene mirrors the plaque beside it, and the two were probably paired on either side of a piece of furniture so that the animals faced each other. The ivory is a little over nine centimetres long. The eyes of both animals were once inlaid with coloured material that has fallen out, leaving small hollows, and the surface has lost whatever gilding it may have had, so the carving shows its bare creamy tone. Notice the folds of skin at the cow's neck and the delicate hooves.
Plaques like this were made by Phoenician or Syrian craftsmen in the ninth and eighth centuries before our era and reached Assyrian hands as tribute or plunder. This one was found in room fourteen of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash in northern Syria, the Assyrian residence at ancient Hadatu, in the excavations of 1928 led by François Thureau-Dangin. The Louvre received it in the partage of 1929, together with the other plaques of the same set displayed here.
Did You Know? The eyes of both cow and calf were once filled with coloured inlay, tiny gems that vanished long ago.
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