Brewer's: Ivory Palaces

are not unfrequently mentioned in the Old Testament. Thus (Psalm xlv. 8), “All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces;” in 1 Kings xxii. 39 we read that Ahab built “an ivory house;” and in Amos iii. 15 we read, “I will smite the winter-house with the summer-house, and the houses of ivory.” Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in her Letters, speaks of the ivory fittings of the harem of the Kahya's palace at Adrianople. She says, “Its winter apartments are wainscotted with inlaid work of mother-of-pearl and ivory of different colours” (vol. ii. p. 161-162).

“The ceilings of the Eastern houses are of mosaic work, and for the most part of ivory, like those superb Talaar of Persia.” —St. John Chardin.

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