Note 404 — Chapter IV · THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

Among the ivories in case C of the Nimroud Gallery there is a kind of blackish ivory egg, which may have served as the knob of a sceptre. In an oval crowned by the uræus between two feathers, we find an inscription which appears to be Phœnician. It has been read as the name of a king of Cyprus. Loftus, in a letter addressed to the Athenæum (1855, p. 351), speaks of other ivories from the south-western palace at Nimroud. They are the remains of a throne, and were found in a deposit of wood ashes. He says there was a shaft formed by figures placed back to back and surmounted by a capital shaped like a flower. There was also, according to the same authority, a Phœnician inscription.