The great, ninth century palace which Ashurnasirpal II (883-859) built at his new capital of Kalhu/Nimrud has been excavated over 150 years by various expeditions. Each has been rewarded with remarkable antiquities, including the finest ivories found in the ancient Near East, many of which had been brought to Kalhu by the Assyrian kings. The first ivories were discovered by Austen Henry Layard, followed a century later by Max Mallowan, who found superb ivories in Well NN. Neither Layard nor Mallowan was able to empty Well AJ: this was achieved by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage, who retrieved arguably the finest pieces found at Nimrud. Finally, an interesting collection of ivory and bone tubes was found by Muzahim Mahmud, the discoverer of the famous Royal Tombs, in Well 4. This volume publishes for the first time the majority of the ivories found in the Palace by location. These include superb examples carved in Assyria proper and across the Levant from North Syria to Phoenicia and provide an outstanding illustration of the minor arts of the early first millennium. In addition ivories found in the Central Palace of Tiglath-pileser III and fragmentary pieces found in the domestic contexts of the Town Wall Houses are also included. In addition to a detailed catalogue, this book also aims to assess the present state of ivory studies, discussing the political situation in the Levant, the excavation of the palace, the history of study, the various style-groups of ivories and their possible time and place of production. This volume is the sixth in the Ivories from Nimrud series published by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq now known as the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.

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.

The fifth in a five volume series. Volume V deals with small collections of ivories found at Fort Shalmaneser and tries to place them in their positions before the final assault and looting on the palace.

Archaeological research and ancient records have been combined in this work to provide a comprehensive account of the buildings of Merv, an oasis city in the middle of the Turkmenistani desert. Founded in the sixth century BC, Merv was a key staging post along the Central Asian trade routes linking Europe and India, and its buildings - palaces, pavilions, gardens and towers springing from the sand - impressed all who visited it. Although eroded by time and weather, enough remains of these buildings to illustrate the evolution of architectural styles in the early medieval and Seljuk eras (7th to 13th cents AD), a period during which the Islamic world developed its own unique range of building types and decorative motifs. This book examines in detail each of the surviving buildings of Merv, discussing their form and function - from palaces to ice-houses, from fortified watch-towers to libraries and dovecotes. Details of doors, windows, corridors and stairways, monumental entrances, rooms, domes and vaults, niches, wall decoration and flooring are described and illustrated in great detail. The book will serve as a major resource for scholars of Islamic architecture.