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
Excavations at the Temple Mount Excavations at the Temple Mount A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount—a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem—have taken place over the last 150 years. The first were undertaken by the British Royal Engineers in the 1870s. Since Israel took control of the Old City in 1967, archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the Mount have been undertaken by Israel and the Jordanian/Palestinian-led Jerusalem Islamic Waqf. Both excavations have been controversial and criticized. Israeli and Jewish groups have criticized excavations conducted by the "Waqf", the Muslim authority in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.