Cleveland Museum of Art

Decorative Plaque: Ram-Headed Sphinxes Flanking a Sacred Tree

Date

900–800 BCE

Medium

ivory

Culture

Phoenicia, Iraq, Nimrud

Department

Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This small plaque was executed in the Phoenician style with symmetrical compositions, elongated figural proportions, and Egyptian subjects and motifs. Examples have been found throughout the Middle East, but thousands come from Nimrud where most were excavated in the storerooms of a military arsenal built by King Shalmaneser II (858-824 bc). When the Nimrud palace was sacked in the 7th century bc, these ivories were thrown into a well, where Sir Max Mallowan (the husband of Agatha Christie) discovered them in 1951. The monumental wall relief (1943.246) was found at the same Assyrian palace at Nimrud.

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