Panel ca. 8th century B.C. Assyrian This ivory panel 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. Like many other panels from the same storage room, it was part of a chair or couch back or the headboard of a bed. Twenty pieces of furniture were discovered stacked in orderly rows in this room, where they had been stored before the destruction of the Assyrian palaces in 612 B.C. Shown here is a bearded male figure wearing a long robe belted at the waist, striding forward on bare feet, with both arms extended to grasp the tendrils of a plant. With his left hand, he raises a drooping stalk of the plant toward a winged sun disk with a pair of hanging volute forms. Below is a row of alternating lotus blossoms and buds, a common decorative motif in ancient Near Eastern art. The bearded figures association with thriving vegetation and with the sun suggests concepts of