Head and foreleg of a snarling lion

This substantial piece of ivory in the shape of a lion’s foreparts, carved in the round, was probably part of a piece of elite furniture. Carved ivory pieces like this one were often inlaid into a wooden frame using joinery techniques and glue, and could be overlaid with gold foil or inlaid with colored glass or stone pieces to create a dazzling effect of gleaming surfaces and bright colors. The eye socket is hollowed out to receive an inlay in contrasting materials, now lost. The mane is carved as a series of overlapping individual locks, and other details are similarly precisely indicated, such as the bared teeth and the tensed muscles in the foreleg and muzzle. Lions, which were associated with royalty and with the warlike goddess Ishtar, seem to have been frequently depicted in ivory and used as the support for elaborate chairs or thrones. Many large pieces of carved ivory representing the legs or heads of lions have been found in royal storerooms at the Assyrian capital of Nimrud, including several examples in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (60.145.8, 62.269.1, 62.269.7). This fragment comes from a well in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, where many finely carved ivories were found during the excavations of the palace. The ivories were probably thrown in the well during the sack of the Assyrian palace buildings at Nimrud at the time of Assyria’s final defeat in 612 B.C.

Built by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II, the palaces and storerooms of Nimrud housed thousands of pieces of carved ivory. Most of the ivories served as furniture inlays or small precious objects such as boxes. While some of them were carved in the same style as the large Assyrian reliefs lining the walls of the Northwest Palace, the majority of the ivories display images and styles related to the arts of North Syria and the Phoenician city-states. Phoenician style ivories are distinguished by their use of imagery related to Egyptian art, such as sphinxes and figures wearing pharaonic crowns, and the use of elaborate carving techniques such as openwork and colored glass inlay. North Syrian style ivories tend to depict stockier figures in more dynamic compositions, carved as solid plaques with fewer added decorative elements. However, some pieces do not fit easily into any of these three styles. Most of the ivories were probably collected by the Assyrian kings as tribute from vassal states, and as booty from conquered enemies, while some may have been manufactured in workshops at Nimrud. The ivory tusks that provided the raw material for these objects were almost certainly from African elephants, imported from lands south of Egypt, although elephants did inhabit several river valleys in Syria until they were hunted to extinction by the end of the eighth century B.C.