Ivories Ancient and Mediæval

Ivory has captivated human imagination for millennia. From the carved amulets buried with Egyptian pharaohs to the luminous diptychs that guarded Byzantine altars, this singular material bridged the sacred and the profane, the mortal and the divine. Maskell's 1887 study traces that magnificent arc: he examines how ancient craftsmen coaxed gods from elephant tusks and walrus tusks, how Roman nobles displayed ivory mirror-cases at their dinner parties, how Christian artists transformed pagan luxury into holy icons. The book ventures into the material itself, distinguishing elephant from mammoth from bone, and into the workshops, the trade routes, the very hands that shaped these treasures across three thousand years. What emerges is not merely a catalog of objects but a meditation on why civilizations have always reached for this particular substance: its warmth, its capacity for minute detail, its strange persistence. For anyone fascinated by art history, material culture, or the hidden histories embedded in beautiful things, this Victorian masterpiece remains an indispensable guide to an art form that literally survived the ages.