Openwork furniture plaque with a "woman at the window" ca. 8th century B.C. Assyrian On this fragmentary plaque, four bands nestled inside one another, preserved on one side, frame the head of a female figure who peers out toward the viewer over a balustrade supported by columns with volute capitals. A number of other furniture inlay plaques with this imagery, a motif known as the "woman at the window," have been 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. This plaque can be attributed to the Phoenician style due to its openwork carving technique. The hair, bound by a thin fillet with a floral element, is parted in the center and falls in ringlets. The drilled pupils suggest that they were originally enlivened with semiprecious stone or glass inlays. There is no conclusive interpretation of whom these plaques were meant to represent; some scholars associate