A Rambling Post About the Nimrud Ivories

Hola!

I've been pounding away on my ginormous family tree, trying to clean up various things, adding things, trying to figure out a logical way to begin to print off, scan and email its contents to awaiting relatives, and not thinking about the Goddesschess blog at all (don't worry, we are still providing funding for various chess femmes in events and 2016 will see five such events).

While digging around on my now antique but trusty Toshiba laptop with Vista installed on it (which I do NOT want to give up but support is going to end for the Vista operating system next year some time - those Microsoft BASTARDS!) in my photos searching for a family portrait of one of my paternal great-uncles (couldn't find the damn thing to save my life),  I happened upon this gorgeous beauty who was next in the row after the last family tree image:

I've got her labeled as "Nimrud Syrian Court Beauty."  But no date on her, no ID information of where I'd copied her from. 

Hmmmm.  I checked the properties of the image and found I had saved it on June 25, 2011.  Holy Hathor!  That didn't tell me anything, though, other than I'd saved her nearly five years ago. Try to remember an image I saved 5 years ago - when I cannot remember what the hell I hate for supper last night.  Hmmm, come to think of it, I was so busy doing this and that, I did not eat any supper last night.  No wonder my stomach has been growling relentlessly since 3 a.m. 

I wondered where I had found her.  I am pretty sure I saved her because she reminds me of a chess piece!  Could be a Queen, could be a forerunner of the "Vizier" who eventually turned into our mitre-hatted and exclusively male "Bishop."  This image reminds me of another image that, of course - now - I cannot find, it's so old it is probably one of the images I moved from my old Windows XP desktop.  I believe it is now residing on a newer Windows 7 laptop to which I had transferred everything (other than emails) sometime in 2014.  Alas, I subsequently spilled a glass of wine on that Windows 7 Toshiba one day sometime in 2014 and now the keyboard only types backwards when the keys work at all and it is impossible to use it for internet purposes.  I've been intending ever since to take it into a repair place, just have not gotten around to it yet.  It's probably a hopeless cause in any event, and I should just transfer everything from THAT laptop to my current Toshiba laptop that has Windows 10 on it.  I hate that damn Windows 10, though, and so I am hanging back doing any such thing.  Do you think I have attachment issues to "old" operating systems and even older computers?

Back to the image that I can't find:  It is a carving of a goddess with a tower (that looks like a medieval castle tower or keep) upon her head.

I always think of the goddess Car when I think of walls and fortifications, but I do not think the image I recall is a carving of Car.  I believe I found her at an obscure archaeology magazine website whose url I cannot recall.  I will probably find her 10 years from now somewhere in the thousands of images I have stored on my various computers when none of this really matters anymore, because people will have figured out by then for themselves that Chess Is The Game Of The Goddess after mucho new archaeological discoveries and several fresh looks at existing evidence and archaeological finds leads to that inevitable conclusion.

Okay, I can see this post is going to turn into one of my semi-epic journeys into JanXena's Twilight Zone, so get yourself a bottle of wine and a big bowl of munchies and settle in.

Back to attempting to write the meat of this post:  Had I written a post about the Nimrud ivory court beauty pictured above and that was why she was among my saved photos?  I don't remember and right now I'm just too damn lazy to try and do a blog search for her.  Instead, I did an online quicky search for "Nimrud Syrian court beauty" - the lazy person's method, LOL!

Lo and behold -- I found not an eurudite and scholarly post written at Goddesschess but a 2011 article from The UK's "Daily Mail" (I confess, it is one of my favorite places to browse).

I'd no idea - but it turns out famous mystery writer Agatha Christie was married at one time to a famous British archaeologist (in archaeological circles, that is), and she used to help him on his digs.  Among them was a dig or digs that took place in Iraq at the ancient site of Nimrud where they uncovered thousands of fragments of small ivory carvings.  Agatha used her cold cream to gently clean them of muck and dirt.  (Does anyone remember's Ponds's Cold Cream?  I do.  Holy Hathor, I'm getting OLD).

I did a quick perusal of the article I discovered online, but I did not see my particular "Syrian ivory court beauty" although there are so many  ivories in a group photo, it would be difficult to pick her out.  At the very end of the article -- I saw two images that are distinctly Egyptian. 

So - I think to myself - you are getting older Jan, you could be losing your marbles to senility.  Maybe these are not Egyptian at all:

 

 Naaaaah, I assured myself.  Those ivories pictured directly above are definitely Egyptian, NOT Assyrian. The art style, the iconography, cannot be mistaken. They were found in Nimrud and were also sold to the British Museum as part of Agatha Christie's collection of thousands of ivories collected from there. But they are not Assyrian. 

The answer lies in the March 8, 2011 article from The Daily Mail.  Cartloads of these ivories (some gold-covered) were hauled to Nimrud as tribute over years and years, and at the time some parts of Egypt or Egypt-centric settlements were included in the Assyrian empire. Sadly for gold treasure hunters, the Babylonians got to the hoards first, and melted off the gold ages ago.  What archaeologists discovered are what was left behind.

British Museum buys 3,000-year-old ivory carvings Agatha Christie cleaned with her face cream

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 08:36 EST, 8 March 2011

• 6,000-piece collection to go on display in London

She revealed in her autobiography that her face cream was invaluable in cleaning finds on her husband's archaeological digs. 

And now some of the 3,000-year-old carved ivory pieces that the author helped preserve will go on show for the first time.

Almost 6,000 pieces have been bought for £1.17million by the British Museum in London.

They were discovered between 1949 and 1963 at Nimrud in what is now northern Iraq, in an excavation led by Sir Max Mallowan, one of Britain's most celebrated archaeologists.

His first wife, murder-mystery writer Christie, was in the excavation team and is known to have help clean and preserve some of the objects.

'I had my own favourite tools; an orange stick, a very fine knitting needle... and a jar of cosmetic face cream for gently coaxing the dirt out of the crevices, ' she wrote in her autobiography published in 1977, the year after her death.

The ancient objects include decorative ivories for use on wooden furniture, as well as fragments of ivories used on horse trappings, statues and decorative boxes.  Most of the pieces, which date from the 9th to the 7th Century BC, would have been covered with gold leaf and inlaid with prized semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli.  They were discovered in a royal arsenal within Fort Shalmaneser palace in Nimrud, which was once the capital of the Assyrian empire.

The empire covered swathes of the Middle East, including Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria and Jordan, even stretching to cover half of modern-day Egypt. [End of article]

****************

The mystery of where I found the image of my "Nimrud Syrian court beauty" remains.

UPDATE: March 9, 2016

Hola everyone.  I received a comment responding to this post but it was directed to a different post than this one.  I am publishing it here:

 Musicalbard said...

Hi, I noticed your "Nimrud" artifact and came up with this site for you to check out. http://www.d-alyasmen.com/alhalm/part2/013.htm I hope it helps place and date the artifact for you.
Sincerely
Elizabeth

After at first typing it in wrong and wondering why I could not get the link to work (duh), I corrected the url and was taken to a link with a foreign language article about Gilgamesh.  I vaguely remember something about the epic from high school, but have never read it in full (English translated version).  A picture of my ivory court beauty is used in the article, but without credit or source information so I cannot back-track it.  The epic of Gilgamesh date to approximately 1800 BCE, which would make it quite a bit older than the circa 1000 BCE date for the creation of the Nimrud ivories.  So, I'll need to add this to my list of never-to-be-accomplished research project, learning more about the Nimrud ivories.  Somehow, the ivory court beauty just doesn't seem to be of the same genre as the examples shown in The Daily Mail article.

The True Origins of the Koran

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" (Image: The Goddess Kore, from the PARTHENON, temple of the goddess Athena on the Acropolis. From the 6th century BCE. Photo Greek National Museum, Athens. Notice the artistry - are those just braids in her hair, or are they intertwined with serpents?) Koran Mohammedan scriptures, often erroneously thought to have been written by Mohammed. Moslems don't believe this.(1) But many don't know the Koran was an enlarged, revised version of the ancient Word of the Goddess Kore, revered by Mohammed's tribe, the Koreshites (Children of Kore), who guarded her shrine at Mecca. The original writing was done long before Mohammed's time by holy imams, a word related to Semitic ima, "mother."(2) Like the original mahatmas or "great mothers" in India,the original imams were probably priestesses of the old Arabian matiarchate. It was said they took the scriptures from a prototype that existed in heaven from the beginning of eternity, "Mother of the Book" - i.e., the Goddess herself, wearing the Book of Fate on her breast as Mother Tiamat wore the Tablets of Destiny. Sometimes the celestial Koran was called the Preserved Tablet.(3) There was some resemblance between this and other legendary books of divine origin, such as the Ur-text, the Book of Thoth and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. As in the case of the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Koran was much rewritten to support new patiarchal laws and to obliterate the figures of the Goddess andher priestesses. See Arabia. Notes: (1) Encyc. Brit., "Mohammed." (2) Campbell, Oc.M., 443. (3) Budge, A.T., 52. *************************************************************** Kore Greek Holy Virgin, inner soul of Mother Earth [Demeter - The Divine Mother, she of the mare's head whose mane was entwined with serpents -- see earlier entry on Delphi]; a name so widespread, that it must have been one of the earliest designations of the World Shakti or female spirit of the universe. Variations include Ker, Car, Q're, Cara, Kher, Ceres, Core, Sanskrit Kaur or Kauri, alternate names for the Goddess Kali. Neolithic Asia knew a mysterious Goddess Ker, or Car, ancestress of the Carians.(1) Her city in the Chersonese was Cardia "the Goddess Car." Kardia became the Greek word for "heart," as cor became the Latin; both descended from the Goddess who was the world-heart. The same syllable is found in words for maternal blood relationships: Gaelic cairdean, kinship; Turkish kardes, maternal siblings.(2) The Goddess became Kardia ton kosmos: "Heart of the World."(3) Shrines of Karnak in Egypt and Carnac in Brittany were sites of gigantic temples and funerary complexes over 5000 years ago, dedicated to Kar or Kore. France had similar shrines in similarly-named locations, Kerlescan, Kercado, Kermario.(4) The last name combined the pagan Virgin with the Goddess Mari, who was sometimes her daughter, her mother, or herself, like Kali embodied in Kel-Mari.(5) Inhabitants of Carnac, and of Carnantum on the Danube, called themselves in Roman times the Carnutes, "people born of the Goddess Car."(6) In Egypt's early dynastic period there was a place called Kerma (Mother Ker) in Nubia, where mass sacrifices took place. A similar name, Kara, was held in reverence by several early Egyptian rulers. Egyptians spoke of an eastern land called Kher [possibly - Kehmet? -- land of the Mother Kar?], and called Palestine the country of Kharu.(7) Car or Carna was known to the Romans as "a Goddess of the olden time," whose archaic worship was connected with Karneia festivals of Sparta and the classic Roman Carnival.(8) Sometimes she was Carmenta, "the Mind of Car," who invented the Roman alphabet.(9) An extremely old temple on the Caelian Hill was dedicated to her.(1) A later variation of her name was Ceres, origin of such words as cereal, corn, kernel, core, carnal, cardiac. In the east this ancient Goddess was everywhere. Some said she was Artemis Caryatis, mother of the Caryatides of the Laconian temple of Caryae.(11) The Tyrian seaport of Caraalis (modern Cagliari) was sacred to her.(12) One of Israel's oldest shrines, the "garden" called Mount Carmel, was her place and that of her baalim (gods).(13) Kore was a great power in Coptic religion, with a flourishing cult at Alexandria in the 4th century A.D. Her festival, the Koreion, was held each January 6 , later assimilated to Christianity as the feast of Epiphany. [I believe this is the date the Holy Spirit in the form of "tongues of fire" was said to have descended upon the heads of loyal disciples of the LORD Jesus Christ who had gathered together in a room in Jerusalem to commemerate the 40th day after his death. This is an extremely ancient tradition that pre-dates Christianity and Islam. We have seen recently in Iran that people gather together to mourn the loss of a decedent 40 days after his or her death. The number "40" is mentioned several times in the Bible - according to Jewish tradition, this denotes a "long indeterminate period of time" but this is probably a later gloss-over of this number sacred to the Goddess]. Kore's festival celebrated the birth of the new year god Aeon to the Virgin, whose naked image was carried seven times around the temple, decorated with gold stars and the sign of the cross. The priests announced to the public that the Virgin had brought forth the Aeon.(14) The Koreion passed into British tradition as the Kirn, or Feast of Ingathering, which the church later changed to the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy. Kirn was a cognate of the Greek kern or sacred womb-vase in which the grain god was reborn.(15) [I assume this is also related to cairn, sacred burial place of the dead, and to the word corn - a food of the gods in the New World, and related words such as kernel. I find it very interesting that earlier this evening I blogged an article about an intact Elamite "jar burial" -- perhaps another ancient tradition that is related to this equally old Mother Goddess.] Here again, the Kore or Ker was a virgin mother. The Goddess's harvest instrument, a moon-sicle, represented even the Christian versin of the festival.(16) The classic myth of Kore's abduction by Pluto was another instance of a god's usurpation of the Goddess's power, according to Gnostic sources. "Plutonius Zeus...does not possess the nourishment for all mortal living creatures, for it is Kore who bears the fruit."(17) Kore's resurrection represented the seasonal return of vegetation. She was also the World Soul animating each human soul, and looking out of the eyes. Reflection in the pupil of an eye was known as the Kore or "Maiden" in the eye. To the Arabs, it was the "baby" in the eye. The Bible calls either a daughter or a soul "the apple of thine eye" (Proverbs 7:2); and of course, every apple had a Kore. [Perhaps this belief is the source for the phrase in Bryan Adams' mega-hit song from "Don Juan DeMarco" When You Really Love a Woman, "...when you can see your unborn children in her eyes, you know you really love a woman... ." Notes: (1) Graves, W.G., 373. (2) Farh, W.P., 144. (3) Cumont, A.R.R.P., 72. (4) Encyc. Brit., "Carnac." (5) Braffault I, 474. (6) J.H. Smith, D.C.P., 39. (7) Erman, 228, 278. (8) Dume'zl, 386, 389. (9) Graves, G.M., 1, 280; 2, 137. (10) Encyc. Brit., "Carna." (11) Graves, W.G., 372. (12) Masa, 43. (13) Encyc. Brit., "Carmel." (14) Campbell, M.I., 34. (15) Neumann, G. M., 132. (16) Brewster, 424. (17) Robinson, 305.