Agatha Christie ivories on show

Carved ivories dating back almost 3,000 years, which were excavated with the help of novelist Agatha Christie, will go on show for the first time after being bought for £1.17m by the British Museum.

By The Newsroom

Published 8th Mar 2011, 06:00 BST

The 6,000 treasures were discovered between 1949 and 1963 at Nimrud, once the capital of the Assyrian empire, in what is now northern Iraq, in an excavation led by Sir Max Mallowan, one of Britain’s most celebrated archaeologists.

His first wife, murder-mystery writer Christie, was in the excavation team and is known to have cleaned and preserved some of the objects, possibly using her face cream.

They include carved decorative ivories as well as fragments of ivories used on horse trappings, statues and decorative boxes.

Most of the pieces, which date from the 9th to the 7th Century BC, would have been covered with gold leaf and inlaid with semi-precious stones.

They were discovered in a royal arsenal in Fort Shalmaneser palace.

A room was built on the site so Christie could continue to write, penning They Came To Baghdad and the Hercule Poirot story Hickory Dickory Dock, while she was there.