The mixed collection of ivory objets d'art called the Nimrud Ivories, for want of a better name, was part of the earliest fruit of those excavations which first set the Mesopotamian branch of archaeology on its course of brilliant achievement. Their ultimate publication by the British Museum is now projected. Towards this end the present essay is designed as a tentative study and provisional report.
The obscurity which has surrounded them has been due to the exceptional difficulties attending their sorting and repair, since, in fact, they consisted of an enormous and jumbled mass of calcined and brittle fragments. After many months' work the mass of several thousand fragments, many quite formless, has now been sorted out; about a thousand joins have been found, but the results turn out meagre and disappointing, although there is still much to be done. Hardly a single completed object results. But how comes it, after all, that there are so many pieces? The lapse of time has completely obscured their history. It seems to have passed unnoticed by all that much more was exhibited in the Museum than Layard was ever known to have found at Nimrud. It was noticed recently that the Nimrud Ivories are not a homogeneous collection in point of style, most being an uncertain element, but some being normal Assyrian work; we may now add further, not all were from the same building and not all are even from Nimrud. It is the case, as Goldsmith says, that there is something so attractive about riches that the greater heap collects from the smaller, and by this strange law of gravity several pieces from other sites have been attracted into the orbit of the greater mass from Nimrud. Lastly, not all those from Nimrud are from the same spot, but mainly are from two separate deposits. With those few pieces, however, not from Nimrud, or those which are simply of native Assyrian style, we shall not deal here except for occasional use as incidental evidence.