Nimrud ivories that followed the death of Sargon II in 705 BC or when Nineveh fell and was destroyed in 612 BC. Mallowan's wife was the famous British crime novelist, Agatha Christie (1890–1976), who was fascinated with archaeology, and who accompanied her husband on the Nimrud excavations. Christie helped photograph and preserve many of the ivories found during the excavations, explaining in her autobiography that she cleaned the ivories using a fine knitting needle, an orange stick and a pot of face cream. The collection of ivories uncovered by Mallowan were divided between Iraq and Britain, where they remained at the British
Nimrud Slab Nimrud Slab The Nimrud Slab, also known as the Calah Orthostat Slab, is the top half of a "summary inscription" of the reign of Adad-nirari III (811 to 783 BC) discovered in 1854 in by William Loftus in his excavations at Nimrud on behalf of the "Assyrian Excavation Fund". It is the best known of the inscriptions of Adad-nirari III, since it includes a description of early Assyrian conquests in Syria and Palestine. The inscription was carved on a gypsum slab, and the surviving part of the inscription is thought to represent the top half of the original slab. The