The trade in ivory is of great antiquity; and doubtless, in very early times, there was a far greater demand for it than at present, and elephants were slaughtered in vast numbers. But after this, came a cessation; and the great animals had an opportunity to increase. According to Herodotus, Africa yielded her tributes of elephant teeth to the kings of Persia. The people of Judæa built ivory palaces; and even the galleys of Tyre, according to Pliny, had benches of ivory. In the Odyssey, we read of the luxury of the early Greek princes,—
“The spoils of elephants the roofs inlay.”
The Etruscan attributes of royalty were sceptres and thrones of ivory, and the ancient kings and magistrates of Rome sat upon ivory seats.
It is said, that, in the time of Pliny, the supply of African ivory almost gave out, when, only two centuries earlier, it was so plentiful, that, according to Polybius, the finest tusks were used as door-posts on the confines of Ethiopia, and even for palisades about the fields.
The decay of the ivory trade commenced with the fall of Rome: no longer were the commonest articles made of ivory, and even the Roman ivory tablets (libri elephantini) fell into disuse.
This sudden change was not without its effect; and, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, elephant tusks were a drug in the market. According to Battell, “the natives had their idols of wood in the midst of their towns, fashioned like a negro: and at the foot thereof was a great heap of elephants’ teeth, containing three or four tons of them; these were piled in the earth, and upon them were set the skulls of dead men, which they had slain in the wars, in monument of their victory.”
When the Portuguese first established themselves at Angola and Congo, they found that the natives had accumulated vast stores of ivory, which was applied to the same superstitious uses. The Portuguese collected all they could, and shipped the tusks to Europe, reaping a rich harvest, and so depleting the supply, that in the middle of the seventeenth century it was almost exhausted again. In 1840 there were eleven manufactories of ivory goods in Dieppe, France; and nearly every large city to-day has one or more such. The extreme tastes that in the time of Leo X. required ivory beds, are not gratified in the present day; yet there is a constant demand for ivory.
PLATE XVI.