Ancient Artifact: Ivory Inlay

This time on Artifactually Speaking, I talk about a material that's banned for use today but that was often used in the ancient world to make high-end objects--ivory. Trade in ivory grew so large in the modern era of the 19th and 20th centuries that it led to wholesale slaughter of elephants and the international community rightly banned it. Unfortunately, poaching of elephants for the illegal trade in ivory is still a problem, as is the looting of archaeological sites for the illegal trade in ancient artifacts. In the ancient world, elephant (and hippopotamus) ivory was traded along major trade routes, and a great many ivory inlays were found at Nimrud in excavations over the past 200 years. It's no surprise that we've already uncovered several pieces, though none yet as highly detailed as some found many decades ago. This particular piece is broken and relatively plain, but interesting for the evidence of how it was worked. It was probably set into a piece of furniture and it, in turn, originally had pieces of colored glass or frit imbedded in it. The slots to receive those inlays are intact and were drilled out with a hollow bit.