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Agatha Christie and archaeology
Openwork ivory panel with lion
Ivories are so common at Nimrud they might almost be said to be a hallmark of the site. They all had to be carefully conserved, and as Max recorded, here Agatha came into her own:
'For the
preservation of the objects and their treatment in the field,
Agatha's controlled imagination came to our aid. She
instantly realized that objects which had lived under water for
over 2000 years had to be nursed back into a new and relatively
arid climate. The 'Lady at the Well' [one of the
ivories, now in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad] was therefore kept under
damp towels for several weeks and we reduced the humidity day by
day until she was accustomed to a drier
atmosphere.'
M. Mallowan,
Mallowan's
Memoirs (London, 1977), p.
245
About cleaning the ivories, Agatha Christie herself says:
'I had my
part in cleaning many of them. I had my own favourite tools ... an
orange stick, possibly a very fine knitting needle - one season a
dentist's tool which he lent, or rather gave me, and a jar
of cosmetic face cream, which I found more useful than anything
else for gently coaxing the dirt out of the crevices without
harming the friable ivory. In fact there was such a run on my face
cream that there was nothing left for my poor old face after a
couple of weeks!'
A. Christie,
An Autobiography
(London, 1977), pp. 456-57