Openwork furniture plaque with a striding, ram-headed sphinx ca. 9th-8th century B.C. Assyrian A ram-headed sphinx, a fantastic creature drawn from Egyptian art that combines the head of a ram with the body of a winged lion, strides through a landscape of voluted palmettes in this rectangular openwork plaque. This piece was found in a storeroom at Fort Shalmaneser, a royal building at Nimrud that was probably used to store tribute and booty collected by the Assyrians while on military campaign. Ram-headed sphinxes were often depicted in Egyptian art during the time when this ivory was carved by Phoenician artisans. This suggests that Phoenicians, whose home cities were along the eastern Mediterranean coast, were aware of contemporary Egyptian art. The slender proportions of this composite creatures leonine body are typical of Phoenician ivories, as are several elements drawn from Egyptian art including the pschent crown (the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt), the chevron-patterne