Ivory Plaque with an Egyptian-Style Bearer of Cult Objects
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A man walks to the right on a plaque only five centimetres high. He is dressed in the Egyptian manner: a short wig, a kilt and shirt edged with braid, and a broad collar with its counterweight hanging down his back. In his hands he carries an incense burner whose stand is shaped like a lotus. At the right edge you can just make out part of the wings of a uraeus, the rearing cobra of Egyptian royalty. Purple traces on the background and on the collar's counterweight are the remains of gilding, and tool marks scar the left edge of the frame.
The bearer of offerings is pure Egyptian iconography, transposed by a Phoenician craftsman into a frieze of servants for a piece of Syrian furniture. The museum record notes that some of the Arslan Tash ivories may come from Damascus, which Tiglath-pileser the Third took in 732 before our era. This plaque was found in room fourteen of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, ancient Hadatu, in the 1928 excavations led by François Thureau-Dangin, and came to the Louvre through the partage of 1929.
Did You Know? The incense burner in his hands stands on a lotus, an Egyptian detail copied so faithfully that the plaque could pass for Nile work.
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