An Ivory Sphinx from Nimrud

Browsing through the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery, a casual visitor might be struck by the strongly Egyptian flavor of a small, relief-carved ivory panel that was found in Nimrud, Iraq, capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, and wonder why it is not in the Middle Eastern Gallery with other Assyrian artifacts, or in the Egyptian Galleries instead. A hieracosphinx—a creature with a falcon’s head and lion’s body that could represent the fearsome strength of the Pharaoh —crouches and raises its human arms, palms outward; its head is crowned by the solar disc with encircling uraeus cobra that symbolizes the sun-god Re, and it wears the pharaoh’s nemes headcloth. An Egyptologist’s expert eye, however, would notice the artist’s deviations from Egyptian visual norms: the raised wings, the squashing of the solar disc by the tightly fitting frame, and the peculiar use of human arms on a falcon-headed sphinx. In fact, this lack of fit with the artistic traditions of either Assyria or Egypt was the key to reconstructing the fascinating history of this and thousands more carved ivories excavated in the Assyrian palaces.

Like the sphinx panel, many of the ivories found at Nimrud bear motifs of Egyptian derivation, like the god Horus seated on a lotus, the eye of Horus, or a winged scarab, with only details of style and iconography giving away their non-Egyptian manufacture. Given their close political and economic links with Egypt since the 3rd millennium BCE, the Levantine cities of the Eastern Mediterranean coast—especially those of Phoenicia, in modern Lebanon— are the most likely place of origin. Such ivories have not yet turned up in the limited excavations possible in the still densely populated Phoenician cities. However, pieces with quasi-Egyptian designs have been found in Israel, Syria, Turkey, and Cyprus, and other finds show that the Phoenicians, too, keenly adopted elements of Egyptian culture for their own purposes. The panels from Nimrud once gleamed with gold leaf and colorful inlaid glass and stones; they decorated royal thrones, couches, horse equipment, and cosmetic containers. When the Neo-Assyrian empire (912–612 BCE) conquered the small, wealthy kingdoms of Syria and the Levant, many ivory tusks and decorated objects were taken as tribute or booty, and reliefs show soldiers carrying o furniture from conquered cities. One way the Assyrians could demonstrate their dominance was by literally depriving Levantine kings of their thrones, which were made of costly materials and covered in symbols of abundance and divine protection, and piling them up, stripped of their gold, in the vast storehouses of Assyria.

Before it became a trophy of Assyrian conquest, what was the significance of the hieracosphinx panel for the people who made it? Comparing this carving with other ivories and objects from Egypt and the broader Near East shows us one way Levantine people incorporated Egyptian motifs into their own conceptual world and changed their meaning in the process.

The Penn Museum purchased this panel (together with others on display in the Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean Galleries) from the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, which had sponsored the excavation of a large military palace at Nimrud nicknamed Fort Shalmaneser. The excavators found the hieracosphinx panel among more than a thousand other ivory fragments in Room SW 37 of this palace. These include similar panels showing sphinxes with human or ram heads, as well as further hieracosphinxes. In place of the solar disc, they wear a compressed version of the Egyptian double crown (the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, worn by the pharaoh). These sphinxes, too, raise their human arms from the elbow, palms outward, in a gesture of adoration common to both Egypt and the Levant. In Egypt, human-headed sphinxes were sometimes given human arms instead of lions’ paws, but these were virtually never empty-handed, like in the Nimrud ivories; instead, they held an offering or a cartouche containing a royal name.

In the case of Penn’s hieracosphinx panel, we cannot identify the object of adoration, which must have been depicted on an adjoining piece. But the sphinxes on other panels make their gesture toward a stylized palmette tree, or floral stalk (in the case of the other hieracosphinx). This tree with curling volutes, sometimes called the “tree of life” or “sacred tree,” is a ubiquitous symbol of fertility and divinity in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and its presence identifies these panels as Egyptianized versions of the classic Near Eastern scene of the adoration of the tree by human and mythical creatures. When this palmette tree appears in Egypt, it is on Levantine-influenced decorative objects of the highly international Late Bronze Age (the Egyptian New Kingdom). Indeed, one place it is found is the embroidery of a gorgeously decorated linen tunic from the tomb of Tutankhamun, where the tree is adored by two crouching female sphinxes with floral headdresses and their hands raised before them in precisely the pose of the sphinxes from Nimrud carved 500 years later. Though the cartouches of Tutankhamun embroidered on the same garment show that it was made for the Egyptian king, other motifs, including the tree, female sphinxes, and griffins (eagle-headed winged lions), come from the Levant.

The designer of the Nimrud panels has more thoroughly Egyptianized the scene by flanking the tree with Egyptian-style male human-, ram-, and falcon-headed sphinxes wearing the paraphernalia of the Egyptian king. In one case, the tree is turned into the classically Egyptian papyrus, but the sphinxes raise their wings in Near Eastern style. These choices subtly change the ideological meaning of the tree-adoration scene. While the Near Eastern sphinx and griffin are ferocious but tamed guardian creatures that ward o evil, their Egyptian counterparts represent the king himself more directly and, in animal-headed form, identify him with the falcon-headed sun-god Re or sky-god Horus and the creator-god Amun, who was associated with the ram. Was the artist suggesting a more god-like character for the royal owner of this ivory chair or bed than was typical for the Levant? There is an artful play here in the blending of Egyptian and Near Eastern conventions and meanings. This experiment did not take place in isolation, however, but represents one more reply in a centuries-long dialogue between these two regions about the relationship between the royal and divine worlds.