Ashmolean Museum: Features - NACF Highlight

Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology
Artfund100 - Celebrating 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund

	Ivory box lid from Cordova, Spain Gallery 24, middle case on left wall

	This lid of a finely carved ivory casket is decorated with four hunters on horseback. It is inscribed in Arabic with the name of its owner, the son of the regent of the Umayyad court and is dated AD 999. The Umayyads, the first ruling dynasty of Islam, ruled their vast empire from Damascus. Following a defeat in the mid 8th century, the survivors settled in Spain, giving rise to a cultural and political 'Golden Age' of medieval Islam. Some of the best surviving examples of the artistic sophistication achieved under the Spanish Umayyads are carved ivory caskets like this one. They were commissioned by the highest levels of society as containers for precious possessions such as perfumes or jewels.

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