Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/360

322 A History of Art in Chald.ea and Assyria. Ivory was used for many purposes ; we have described how it was employed upon ceilings and doors; 1 we have just seen how it helped to ornament articles of furniture ; it also supplied the material for many useful and ornamental objects, such as sceptres, boxes, cups, knife-handles, etc. (Fig. 202). Did the Assyrians understand how to give still greater variety to the appearance of these things by staining the ivory ? At first sight it might appear that they did. Among the specimens in the British Museum some have the fine yellow colour of the Fig. 202. — Dagger hilt. Ivory. Actual size. Louvre. Renaissance ivories ; others are white, grey, brown or even quite black. These tints, as I myself ascertained, are not by the uraeus between two feathers, we find an inscription which appears to be Phcenician. It has been read as the name of a king of Cyprus. Loftus, in a letter addressed to the Athenœum (1855, p. 351), speaks of other ivories from the south-western palace at Nimroud. They are the remains of a throne, and were found in a deposit of wood ashes. He says there was a shaft formed by figures placed back to back and surmounted by a capital shaped like a flower. There was also, according to the same authority, a Phcenician inscription. 1 See Vol. I., pp. 299-302.