Horse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinx

Horse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinx

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The craftsmen who carved ivories in the Phoenician style were strongly influenced by Egyptian art. Many of these ivories illustrate Egyptian themes and motifs, but in entirely original compositions. Phoenician-style ivories were used primarily as furniture decoration. Some are solid plaques; others are carved on one or both sides in a delicate openwork technique. Many were originally covered with gold leaf and inlaid with semiprecious stones or colored glass. Elaborate horse trappings, including frontlets and blinkers such as this one, were sometimes crafted from ivory and are represented on Assyrian reliefs. This spade-shaped horse blinker is decorated in low relief with a seated sphinx wearing the Egyptian cobra, or uraeus, and sun disk on its head. Another winged uraeus and sun disk faces the sphinx to its left. Behind the sphinx is a cartouche attached to a lotus plant. The hieroglyphic inscription inside the cartouche is a Phoenician name, "Djunen."

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Horse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinxHorse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinxHorse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinxHorse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinxHorse blinker carved in relief with a seated sphinx

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.