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
Pratt Ivories in 1932. At the time, the sphinxes were interpreted as "little ivory stool legs" having been made by a Phoenician or Syrian craftsman for the Assyrian market. This assessment was largely based on their resemblance to pieces uncovered in excavations of the Assyrian capital, Nimrud. This comparison suggests a date of manufacture in the early first millennium B.C. From 1936 to 1937, following the death of her husband, Mrs. Pratt gave numerous other ivory pieces in three successive groups, eventually contributing sixty-six ivory objects, in addition to the three works donated in 1932. While these were immediately recognized as furniture