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Ancient Ivory - Masterpieces of the Assyrian Empire (Hardcover)
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Ancient Ivory - Masterpieces of the Assyrian Empire (Hardcover)
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Ivory is a wonderful material: tactile, beautiful, workable into
many different forms and the strongest in the animal kingdom.
Unfortunately for the elephant, it has been highly prized from the
Palaeolithic to the present day, in part by virtue of its rarity
and the difficulty of acquiring it. During the early first
millennium bc - the `Age of Ivory' - literally thousands of carved
ivories found their way to the Assyrian capital city of Kalhu, or
modern Nimrud, in northern Iraq. The majority were not made there,
in the heart of ancient Assyria, but arrived as gift, tribute or
booty gathered by the Assyrian kings from the small neighbouring
states of the ancient Middle Eastern world. The ivories were first
unearthed in the mid-19th century by renowned Victorian traveller
and adventurer Austen Henry Layard, but it was not until the
mid-20th century that the extent of the treasure was realized by
Max Mallowan, the archaeologist husband of Agatha Christie.
Thousands of extraordinary ivories have since been excavated from
the ruins of the ancient city's extravagant palaces, temples and
forts. In recent years, many have been destroyed or remain at risk
following the invasion of Iraq and the sacking of the Iraq Museum,
as well as in the ongoing conflict and destruction of cultural
heritage in the region. As a result, the ivories preserved in these
pages form a unique and unparalleled record of the otherwise lost
art of the Middle East.
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