Cloisonné furniture plaque with a figure holding a sword ca. 9th-8th century B.C. Assyrian A clean-shaven figure with long locks of hair, identifiable as male because of the bare chest, holds the grip of a long sword in his upraised right hand and thrusts it diagonally across his body in this fragmentary plaque. While this piece is broken at the figures chest, the tip of a curling tail at the upper left corner suggests that he was originally depicted slaying an animal, perhaps a fantastic hybrid creature such as a griffin, in a composition similar to another ivory plaque found at Nimrud also in the Metropolitan Museums collection (MMA 61.197.11). The hair and eyes of the figure are cut into cloisons, walled cells meant to hold inlays of colored glass or semiprecious stones, although none of the inlays have survived. The slender proportions, expressed by his individually delineated fingers and elongated facial features, are characteristic of Phoenician ivories. The remains of a projec