Ivory Plaque with a Stag
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A stag walks to the right on a plaque nearly thirteen centimetres long. Its antlers, its belly and its legs are drawn with a naturalist's eye, and three incised lines run from the base of the ear to the shoulder to mark the folds of the neck. Gold leaf still covers the belly, and purple traces on the antlers and body show where more gilding once lay. The eye is inlaid in red. Animals in a landscape were a favourite theme of the Syrian carvers, and this stag has a calm, grazing ease unlike the heraldic sphinxes around it.
The plaque was found in room fourteen of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, the Assyrian provincial residence at ancient Hadatu in northern Syria, in the 1928 excavations led by François Thureau-Dangin. It came to the Louvre through the partage of 1929. Deer, like the cow and calf on the neighbouring plaques, belonged to a repertoire of peaceful animals that decorated beds and chairs, in contrast to the lion hunts favoured on the stone reliefs of the Assyrian kings.
Did You Know? The stag's eye is a tiny inlay of red, and its belly still wears its original gold leaf.
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