Hence it appears probable that ivory was worked at Nineveh and Babylon, and that probability is changed into a certainty when we examine the other ivories in the same collection. Although not a few of the ivories chiselled in relief offer motives that are strange to Mesopotamian art, it is not so with a series of tablets on which the designs are carried out in pure line and with extreme refinement (Fig. 201). Figures and ornaments are purely Assyrian; winged genii wearing the horned tiara, dressed as in the reliefs, and surrounded with the rosettes and cable pattern to which we have so often referred, and other motives of the same kind. Among the latter may be noticed the variety of knop and flower border that we find so often in the painted and enamelled decoration, in which the knop is replaced by a disk (see Vol. I., Figs. 117 and 118). [Illustration: FIG. 201.--Ivory panel. Actual size. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.] We believe the truth to be as follows. A considerable quantity of Indian ivory entered Mesopotamia by the Persian Gulf and the caravan routes. It was there carved by native artists into the various shapes required, but, especially during the heyday of the Assyrian monarchy, it was far from supplying the whole demand. Africa, through Phœnicia, was called upon to make up the deficiency. But the African ivory was not imported in its raw state, it came in in the form of skilfully chiselled plaques that only required mounting; the merchants, through whom the trade was carried on, delivered sets of these plaques for beds, or chairs, or what not. We thus get at some reason for the difference in style between the tablets in relief and those engraved by the point. The latter represent native art; in the former, where we so often see the characteristic gods, sphinxes, costumes, head-dresses, and even cartouches of the Egyptian monuments, we may recognize the product of the Nile delta, or even of Tyre and Sidon. The inscriptions on several fragments seem to confirm this hypothesis. I have seen no ivory tablets with cuneiform characters, but plenty with those of the Phœnician alphabet.[404] [Illustration: FIG. 202.--Dagger hilt. Ivory. Actual size. Louvre.]