Ivory Plaque with Genies Binding Papyrus Stems
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
Two genies wearing the double crown of Egypt stand on either side of three papyrus stems that are knotted together, each holding a stem and pulling it taut. Beneath the knot emerges a small goddess crowned with a sun disc and holding a curved crook, the symbol the museum identifies with Maat. The plaque is nearly twelve centimetres high and purple traces on the foot of the left-hand figure show where it was gilded. The image is a Phoenician version of the Egyptian scene of the uniting of the Two Lands, in which gods tie the plants of north and south together.
Phoenician carvers rarely understood the Egyptian myths they copied, and here the binding of the plants has been combined with the birth of a deity from the papyrus, a motif seen on other plaques in this case. The piece 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.
Did You Know? The scene copies an Egyptian image of uniting Upper and Lower Egypt, redrawn by a Syrian craftsman who added a goddess sprouting from the knot.
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