Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/322

 ;oo A HISTORY OF ART IN CUALD.KA AXD ASSYRIA. have been used to ornament the coffers. This suggestion in itself seems specious enough, but I failed to discover a single ivory in the rich collection of the British Museum whose shape would have fitted the openings in the tiles. 1 It is certain, however, that ivory was used in the ornamentation of buildings. " I incrusted," says Nebuchadnezzar, ".the door-posts, the lintel, and threshold of the place of repose with ivory." The small rectangular plaques with which several cases and many drawers are filled in the British Museum may very vell have been used for the decoration of doors, and the panels of ceilings and wainscots. They were so numerous, especially in the palace of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud, that we cannot believe them all to have come off small and movable pieces of furniture. We are confirmed in this idea by the fact that none of these ivories are unique or isolated works of art. In spite of the care and taste expended on their execution they were in no sense gems treasured for their rarity and value ; they were the products of an active manufactory delivering its types in series, we might almost say in dozens. The more elegant and finished amon represented three, four, and five times over in the select case in the British Museum. We may safely say that the examples preserved of any one model are by no means all that were made ; in fact, in the drawers in which the smaller fragments are preserved, we noticed the remains of more than one piece which had once been similar to the more perfect specimens exhibited to the public. Thus there are in the Museum four replicas of the little work shown in our Fig. 129.2 The head of a woman, full face, and with an Egyptian head-dress, is enframed in a narrow window and looks over a balcony formed of columns with the curious capitals already noticed on page 211. Beside these four more or less complete examples, the Museum possesses several de- tached heads (Fig. 130) which once, no doubt, belonged to similar compositions. 1 Among the fragments of tiles brought from Nimroud by Mr. George Smith, and nov in the British Museum, there are two like those reproduced above, to which bosses or knobs of the same material glazed earthenware are attached. The necks of these bosses are pierced with holes apparently to receive the chain of a hanging lamp, and are surrounded at their base with inscriptions of Assurnazirpal stating that they formed part of the decoration of a temple at Calah. ED. 2 The size of our engraving is slightly above that of the object itself.