ANCIENT CARVED IVORIES 11 



lines, but most of them cut to represent jointed canes or 

 straws.* 



In the Cairo Museum are a few ivory amulets, three of 

 them figuring serpents' heads, the carving being very rudely 

 executed. These are small objects measuring respectively 

 55 mm., 59 mm., and 49 mm., or from If to Sj in.f 



Early Egyptian ivory carving is represented in the 

 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, by several char- 

 acteristic examples. The finest and the best preserved are 

 two pieces which probably formed the feet of a state chair, 

 a throne, or a couch. They are shaped into the form of 

 the hoof and ankle of bulls ' legs. The ivory is in appearance 

 as fresh as though only recently worked, although these 

 specimens, found at Abydos, are attributed to the period of 

 the First or the Second Dynasty (about 3400 B. C. or 3000 

 B. C). Much less well preserved, but even in its present 

 deteriorated condition showing the work of an artist's hand, 

 is the small figure of a lion, considered to be a carving of the 

 First Dynasty (about 3400 B. C); this came from the old 

 Osiris Temple at Abydos (Thebes) . Another ivory, from the 

 same early period, and equally deteriorated by long exposure 

 to injury either by soil or weather, is a female figure, the 

 lower part of which has been broken away; this was also 

 brought from the ruins of the Osiris Temple at Abydos. 

 With this minute figure as well as with that of the seated lion, 

 time has dealt so unkindly that the ivory has lost all its 

 beauty of hue and smoothness, and at the first glance one 

 would suppose that wood was the material employed. . 



While the old Assyro-Babylonian civilization goes back 

 as far as that of Egypt, the facilities for securing ivory were 



*Stewart Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," Washington, 1898, pp. 812. 814, Figs. 132, 

 ISS, 134; pp. 665-942 of Rep. of U. S. Nat. Mus. for 1896. 



fG. A. Reisner "Catalogue generale des antiquites egyptiennes du Musee du Caire," 

 ••Amulets," Le Caire, 1907. pp. 38, 39; Nos. 5481, 5482, 5492. 



