Before anyone pillories me as a chauvinist pig on Twitter (or whatever it’s called now), I hasten to point out that a) I don’t have a sister, and b) I’m talking about an object that was made when my ancestors in Scotland were living in crannogs. The object in question is an ivory head (more of a face, really, since that’s all that remains) of a woman excavated at Nimrud in northern Iraq by Max Mallowan in 1952.
It was Mallowan who called her the ‘Ugly Sister,’ evidently in comparison with other more fetching ivories he had excavated. (I recently learned this, by the way, from an article by Henrietta McCall in New Light on Nimrud [2008].) I think this rather unfair. How good would you look if your nose, ears, eyebrows, pupils and part of your forehead were missing? More to the point, how could we know what the Assyrians considered to be beautiful? Based on their relief sculpture, I venture to say they were found of bulging biceps and men with birds’ heads.
Accordingly, I think the Ugly Sister needs a new name; Geraldine, perhaps.