Barbara Toy followed the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa, travelling through what was then French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to Cyprus, then down through Lebanon, Syria and then through Jordan to Iraq. While in Iraq she visited several archaeological sites, including in May 1951 Sir Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud where his wife Agatha Christie was helping with processing the finds. The work on the site had just finished, and the finds for that season included the stele of King Assur-nasir-pal II. Her journey home is not described in the book, although in her second book "A Fool in the
Nimrud ivories main storage centre for ivory objects amassed by the Assyrian kings. Subsequent excavations by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities unearthed still more ivories. In recent years excavations by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities have unearthed more ivories. Ivories from Nimrud are held at a number of institutions across the world: The Nimrud Ivories are being published in a series of scholarly catalogues. Many of these are available free online from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI): links here. Nimrud ivories The Nimrud ivories are a large group of small carved ivory plaques and figures dating from the