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Glass inlays and Nimrud ivories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

John Curtis
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Extract

In the 1989 British Museum excavations at Nimrud four small glass plaques were found that were published in a recent volume of Iraq (Curtis, Collon and Green 1993: 15–16, Figs. 14: 5–6 and 16). They came from Room T20 in Fort Shalmaneser, and were found in a deposit that predated a reconstruction of the building probably in the reign of Esarhaddon. The plaques are almost square, measuring about 1·4 × 1·55 cm and 0·15 cm thick (Figs. 1–2). They are made of blue glass and have recessed designs showing six-petalled rosettes in glass of a different colour. Where this inlaid glass survives it is now white but may originally have been yellow. One of the plaques has a small hole right through the centre. It was suggested then that originally these glass plaques would have been mounted in bronze frames and would have been hammered on to various types of furniture as decoration. Further research, however, indicates that it may be possible to suggest a more specific use for these plaques.

A survey of glass plaques with rosettes reveals that there were two different types in circulation in the ancient Near East. First, there are large blue glass plaques where the rosette design is recessed into the surface and filled with what is now (where it survives) opaque white glass. A characteristic of plaques made in this way is that the inlaid rosettes are visible only from one side. Barag comments that “the petals were probably pressed into the blue matrix while both were in a viscous state” (1985: 72), but in the view of von Saldern (1966: 632–3) “the shallow depressions in the tiles to receive the white fillings were cut [my italics] into the blue glass.”

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 61 , 1999 , pp. 59 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1999

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