User:Zozo2kx/Arslan Tash ivories

The Arslan Tash ivories are a collection of more than one hundred ivory plaques discovered at Arslan Tash, the site of the ancient Aramaean city of Hadatu, in Syria. The decorative plaques used to adorn wooden furniture -- probably including a throne several beds. An inscription bearing the name of Hazael, an Aramaean king of Damascus, suggests that the furniture was originally made there and later moved to Hadatu. The collection was discovered in 1928 during excavations by a French archaeological team under François Thureau-Dangin.

Motifs
The discovered ivories can be divided into groups by virtue of their motifs and manufacture technique. The largest group depicts the Egyptian scene of of the "Birth of Horus." In these plaques, carved in low relief, two winged figures are shown flanking the infant god Horus who's sitting on a lotus flower. The figures can be either male or female. Some of the plaques depict a central tree instead of Horus. The plaque's are Phoenician in style, which in turn had acquired it from the ancient Egyptians early in the first century BCE. A second group of consists of four fragments of worshipping scenes. The carved scenes, also in traditional Phoenician style, show male servants worshipping the uraeus serpent. The two groups are slightly different in their proportions from the traditional Phoenician style. In classical Phoenician works the ratio of head to body is consistently 1:5, but in the Arslan Tash ivories it is measured at 1:3.5.

Excavation
The ivories were found during excavations of the royal palace, in a room