Ivory Chair Back with a Tree Pattern in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, August 2007

Chair back with a tree pattern
Ivory, embedded in a modern wood matrix
Mesopotamia, excavated at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), Fort Shalmaneser, Room SW7
Neoassyrian period, Syrian style
8th century BC

Expedition of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq.

Accession # 59.107.1

This is one of several curved ivory panels from Nimrud that were the backs of beds and chairs. Gathered after the city was first attacked in the late seventh century BC, a large number were stacked in orderly rows in a storeroom where they were buried in the final destruction in 612 BC.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.