King Solomon, we are told, “made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.” “The ivory house which Ahab made,” is particularly mentioned among his memorable acts. The Psalmist speaks of garments brought “out of ivory palaces,” or from what may rather be translated wardrobes. The original text is ‏ﬤﬢﬣיﬤﬥישׁן‎. In the earlier Hebrew the word ‏ﬣיﬤﬥ‎ meant a small house or palace; in the later,—and the 45th Psalm is not of early date, and was moreover written in a foreign country,—it meant more commonly a wardrobe, or what we now call a vestry or sacristy. The prophets Ezekiel and Amos tell us of “benches of ivory brought out of the isles of Chittim,” of “horns of ivory,” and of “beds of ivory.” There are other evidences in the Bible of the value and high estimation in which ivory was held by the Jews; and its beauty of appearance, its brightness, and smoothness are used as poetical illustrations in the Song of Solomon. From a verse in the fifth chapter of this last book we also learn that the ivory was sometimes inlaid with precious stones. It is quite evident that in those days works in ivory were regarded in Judæa as a possession only to be acquired by very great and wealthy persons; nor may it be too much, perhaps, to say that they were looked upon as insignia of royalty. We may entirely agree with De Quincy, in his book upon the statue of Jupiter at Olympia: “L’ivoire constitua les ornaments distinctifs de la dignité royale chez les plus anciens peuples. L’antiquité ne parle que de sceptres et de trônes d’ivoire. Tels étaient selon Denis d’Halicarnasse les attributs de la royauté chez les Étrusques. A leur exemple, Tarquin eut le trône et le sceptre d’ivoire, &c.” But, as has been already observed, there are specimens and remains of Egyptian works in ivory still existing which date by many centuries from an earlier time than the days of Solomon or Ahab. These must be, of course, of excessive rarity: partly because of their antiquity and fragile nature; partly because of the smallness of their size, owing to which they must have been frequently overlooked or thrown aside. The collection in the British museum includes some examples, a few of which, particularly two daggers inlaid and ornamented with ivory, are of the time of Moses, about 1,800 years before Christ. Several chairs, ornamented in a like manner, may be attributed to the sixteenth century B.C. Some woodcuts are given of chairs and stools ornamented with ivory, in Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s account of the ancient Egyptians.