Horse frontlet with an incised guilloche design ca. 8th century B.C. Assyrian This ivory plaque was found in a storage room in Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud that was used to store booty and tribute collected by the Assyrians while on military campaign. Its roughly triangular shape indicates that it was used as a horse frontlet, a component of equestrian armor that covered the forehead of a cavalry horse. An incised decorative border runs around the edge of the frontlet, taking the form of a guilloche, or row of interlocking spirals and circles. The surface is undecorated and divided by a vertical raised ridge, triangular in cross-section, decorated on each face with a zig-zag pattern. At the top edge, the frontlet was connected to an additional piece via a hinge, which is no longer extant. Both pieces were probably attached to a separate textile or leather backing, also no longer preserved. The Assyrian cavalry was an important component of the empires armed forces, and