Openwork Ivory Plaque: Ram-Headed Sphinx
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A winged sphinx with the head of a ram stands in openwork on a plaque thirteen centimetres high. The ram's curled horn, the long ear and the muzzle are clearly readable, and a trace of Egyptian blue, the ancient synthetic pigment, still sits in the eye. The right edge, most of the three legs and the upper band are missing, but tenons at the top and bottom survive to show how it was fixed. The creature is of Phoenician type: the ram head is borrowed from the Egyptian god Amun, whose sacred animal it was.
Ram-headed sphinxes lined the avenue to Amun's temple at Karnak, and Phoenician carvers took the image for their furniture, where it stood as a guardian. The plaque was found in room fourteen of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, the Assyrian 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, part of the largest group of Phoenician ivories in the museum.
Did You Know? The eye still holds a speck of Egyptian blue, the world's first synthetic pigment, invented on the Nile more than two thousand years earlier.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.