Furniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute tree

Furniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute tree

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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 plaque, once part of a piece of furniture, is carved in high relief in a typical Phoenician style with Egyptian themes and motifs. Two pharaoh-like figures, standing on either side of a branching tree, wear a version of the double crown of Egypt with the rearing cobra, or uraeus, emblem in front. They also wear a beard, necklace, and pleated short skirt belted at the waist with a central panel decorated with a chevron pattern and uraeus on either side. An ankle-length pleated apron with patterned border falls from behind the figures. Each man holds a ram-headed scepter in his right hand while the figure at left holds a ewer in his left hand; it is unclear what the other man holds. Framed above the scene is a winged sun disk surmounted by a horizontal panel with ten uraei supporting sun disks.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Furniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute treeFurniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute treeFurniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute treeFurniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute treeFurniture plaque carved in high relief with two Egyptianizing figures flanking a volute tree

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.