Tracing the Source of the Elephant And Hippopotamus Ivory from ...

similar to those of the African elephant. Miller’s conclusions are also based on the
assumption that abandonment of large sites (such as Aleppo following destruction by the
Hittites) equates to low settlement density. The population could very well have
dispersed out of the urban centers, but not necessarily declined significantly.
Eventually deforestation and overhunting (for sport or ivory) did annihilate the
Syrian elephant population in the Early Iron Age, with the last references to Syrian
elephants coming from the ninth century B.C. (Scullard 1974: 30; Francis and Vickers
1983: 251; Miller 1986: 32; Krzyszkowska 1990: 15). Francis and Vickers (1983: 249-
251) and Gill (1993: 233) propose the misidentification of the Al Mina elephant tusks
(later identified as a horn core of water buffalo and domesticated cattle) as evidence
against an exportation of Syrian elephant ivory. The Al Mina ‘tusks’ (Al Mina was an
Iron Age Greek emporium) are from the 8 th century B.C., and therefore serve better as an
argument for the extinction of the Syrian elephant before this time than as a refutation for
the utilization of Syrian elephants for ivory.
While the population was probably never very large, at least compared to the
populations in Africa, it is nonetheless a viable source for the ivory of the Uluburun
shipwreck, and even Hayward (1990: 103) notes that the Uluburun shipwreck “would
tend to indicate that the Aegean did indeed receive raw elephant ivory from Syria during
the Late Bronze Age.” Further, an increase in the incorporation of ivory into luxury
craftwork during the late 2 nd millennium could very well be tied to accessibility of Syrian
elephant ivory (Miller 1986: 31).
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