Openwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of fronds

Openwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of fronds

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Furniture inlaid with carved ivory plaques was highly prized by the Assyrian kings. During the ninth to seventh centuries B.C., vast quantities of luxury goods, often embellished with carved ivory in local, Syrian, and Phoenician styles, accumulated in Assyrian palaces, much of it as booty or tribute. This object belongs to a group of plaques depicting animals and stylized plants. They were made by master carvers in a delicate openwork technique characteristic of Phoenician ivory carving. However, the style and subjects depicted have close parallels on stone relief sculptures from Tell Halaf, in northern Syria, and a debate exists over which tradition produced these fine panels.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Openwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of frondsOpenwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of frondsOpenwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of frondsOpenwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of frondsOpenwork furniture plaque with a grazing oryx in a forest of fronds

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.