Roujon, Molinier et Marcou. Catalogue Illustré Officiel de l’Exposition Rétrospective de l’Art Français des Origines à 1800. Paris, 1900. Scharf, Sir G. Article on “Sculpture” in Waring’s Art Treasures of the United Kingdom. Manchester, 1873. Schlumberger, G. Un Empereur Byzantin au X^e Siècle. Nicéphore Phocas. Paris. Didot. 1890. L’Epopée Byzantine à la fin du X^e Siècle. Paris, Hachette et C^{ie}. 1896. Stuhlfauth, G. Die altchristliche Elfenbeinplastik. Leipsig, 1896. Venturi, Adolfo. Un cofano civile bizantino di Cividale. Gallerie nazionale italiane. Vol 3. 1897. Storia dell’ arte italiana. I. Dai primordi dell’ arte cristiana al tempo di Giustiano. Hoepli. Milan, 1901. Vöge, W. Katalog der Berliner Elfenbeinwerke. (In course of publication.) Berlin, 1900. “Ein deutscher Schnitzer des X Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch der k. preuss. Kunstsammlungen. Vol. XX. Berlin, 1899. Westwood, J. O. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum. With an Account of the Continental Collections of Classical and Mediæval Ivories. Chapman and Hall. London, 1876. Wilpert, Josef. Un Capitolo della Storia di Vestario. L’Arte. 1898, 1899. THE IVORY WORKERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER I CONSULAR AND OTHER SECULAR DIPTYCHS From the earliest dawn of the human race until our time, Ivory has held a first place as a material for making the pleasing little luxuries of life, religious or civil. Cave-Man has left behind him incised sketches of animals, the product of his leisure moments; all literature tells of the use of it, and the digger’s spade turns up a series of charming objects, from the ornamental hair combs of a prehistoric princess, who dazzled the Egyptian court some 7000 years B.C., to the ivory-handled walking-stick of some gouty old Greek who lived at the outset of this most prosaic era. To this passion for carved ivory we owe our knowledge of the continuity of art for many centuries after the break up of the Roman Empire, and the almost complete cessation of monumental sculpture. In fact, no such continuous chain has survived in any other artistic production; and this alone makes the study of the craft of such intense interest, illustrating as it does the early quickening of art in a period of great obscurity between the old order and the new.