Handle with two heads of ducks

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This object was found in Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud that was used to store booty and tribute collected by the Assyrians while on military campaign. Many thousands of pieces of carved ivory, probably used as furniture decoration or luxury objects, were excavated from storage rooms in the building. While not as common, carved shell and bone items were also stored at Fort Shalmaneser. This roughly cylindrical object was carved from a piece of bone and decorated with back to back duck’s heads in relief, with bills pointing down and held close to the breast. A circle with drilled dot at the center marks each duck’s eye, and the motif is repeated as a border of circles and dots at the top and bottom. A hole runs through the piece lengthwise, perhaps for inserting a tang that belonged to the implement for which this served as part of a decorated handle.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art