Among the Scandinavians the tusks of the walrus have long been a source of ivory, and of very good quality too. The spirally twisted tusk of the narwhal is the desideratum of the Eskimo hunter. Asiatic ivory is from India and Ceylon elephants, which are rapidly disappearing. America has some fossil deposits and "glacial preserves" of mastodon ivories, but they are more sought for museums and antiquarian collections than for any commercial value.
The uses of ivory are exceedingly varied. The large cuttings are for veneer, plaques, panels, and portraits; then billiard balls, knife, cane, umbrella, and brush handles, piano keys, buttons, measuring rules, mathematical scales, statuettes, caskets, chessmen and draughtsmen, furniture decorations, and an endless variety of ornaments and works of art.
Ivory working is one of the oldest industries. Numerous references occur in the Old Testament which show that the material was regarded as of great value. It was an element in temple decoration, and is often mentioned among the presents to kings, who employed it for regal state. The ancient Egyptians and Assyrians used it extensively.
The excavations of Nineveh, a city that dates nearly 2000 years b. c., have supplied the British Museum with ivories of very great antiquity, many of them in good preservation, and many others tolerably well restored by boiling in gelatin; all show considerable artistic merit and mastery of the material.
Solomon had an ivory throne inlaid with gold—vide description in Chronicles; and the throne of Penelope, of about the same date, is said to have been of ivory and silver. Those ancient carvers attained a delicacy and artistic finish that our modern artists may well envy.
The later Greeks and Romans carried this gold·and·ivory and ebony·and·ivory work to a degree of splendor which seems incredible. From their extensive traffic with Persia and Egypt they obtained immense quantities of both Asiatic and African ivories. The Temple of Juno at Olympia contained, among many great works in ivory, the coffer of Cypselus, the bed, the discus, and the statues of Juno, the Hesperides, and Minerva.
The reputation of the great Phidias was based largely on his gold and ivory sculpture. The Minerva of the Parthenon, forty feet high, and the Olympic Jupiter, fifty-eight feet, evidently surpassed anything of the kind known to moderns. The pupils of Phidias made a number of those colossal images, in which the nude parts of the human figure were in ivory and the drapery in gold.
The Romans were equally extravagant; the gates of the Temple of Apollo, built by Augustus, were of this costly material.
