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ORCHARD, J.J., Ivories From Nimrud Vol. I Part 2, Equestrian Bridal - Harness Ornaments, The British School of Archeology in Iraq, Aberdeen, 1967
The present catalogue is concerned exclusively with the description and illustration of those equestrian bridle-harness ornaments which the British School of Archeology in Iraq discovered at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu: Biblical Calah), some twenty miles southeast of modern Mosul. With the exception of three pieces from the Akropolis mound (North-West Palace, Well NN and Area ZT. Room 16) which came to light in 1952, the bulk of the collection was found between 1958 and 1963 in Fort Shalmaneser (Rooms SW 12, SW 37 and T. 10), a massive and complex palace-arsenal which Shalmaneser III of Assyria (858-824 B.C.) erected in the southeast corner of the Outer Town wall. For the most part, these bridle-harness ornaments from Nimrud are manufactured from elephant ivory, but a few are also extant which are of gypsum. These, despite their alien material, have been included in the present inventory in a special section at the end (see Part III), for not only are the particular interest for comparison with their ivory counterparts, but their inclusion completes the record as a whole. The ornaments are arranged into groups and sub-groups, employed with a number of new descriptive terms.
Between the years 1949 and 1963, in the course of thirteen campaigns, excavations conducted at Nimrud by the British School of Archeology in Iraq yielded many thousands of ivories - mostly in a fragmentary condition. The task of sorting, cleaning, strengthening, repairing, classifying, registering and photographing this vast collection has progressed slowly and steadily. An additional interest which these ivories afford is that a not inconsiderable number of related objects, of copper or bronze as well as ivory, has been discovered elsewhere, notably in Cyprus where Vassos Karageorghis has recently found horse-trappings of a similar character, apparently associated with horse burials of the seventh century B.C. But the related material is even more widely dispersed, from Iran through Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor to the Aegean: objects from Gordion, Miletus, Rhodes, Samos and Eretria have to be considered when we come to investigate the distribution of these ornaments. How these fashions spread, and what particular centre or centres can claim priority, if any can be detected in the diffusing of them, is a topic that must await consideration in the companion fascicule to this one. Other questions that readily come to mind are: to what extent is leather likely to have been used as the prototype for ivory and metal ornaments? Are we justified in positing skeuomorphic origins? What part was played by Syria and the Phoenician cities in the invention and disposal of these objects? How far can we discern an ancestry to these trapping in the Late Bronze Age? Does the elaboration of simple types at Nimrud correspond with a chronological development? Can we assign certain types to the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries B.C. respectively? The answers to these and other problems will doubtless be modified by further discoveries at sites other than Nimrud. |
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