ivories and 5,000 fragments) from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq for £1.17 million, following a public fundraising campaign that raised £750,000 in six months, and with the support of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund. This is the second most expensive purchase by the British Museum since the end of the Second World War. In addition to the purchase, the British Institute for the Study of Iraq has also donated another third of its collection to the British Museum in recognition of the storage of the collection by the museum over the previous 24 years. It is anticipated that the remaining third of the collection will be returned to Iraq sometime in the future. A selection of the ivories will be put on display at the British Museum from 14 March 2011. Oates (1957–1963) The largest single ivory find was made between 1957 and 1963 when a British School team led by David Oates discovered a room at the Nimrud palace that was dubbed the "ivory room", which had apparently served as the main storage centre for ivory objects amassed by the Assyrian kings. Subsequent excavations by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities unearthed still more ivories. Other discoveries In recent years excavations by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities have unearthed more ivories. Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions A number of the ivories contain Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions – a few contain a number of words, and many more contain single letters. Some of these were found in the mid-nineteenth century by Layard and Loftus (in particular a knob inscribed "property of Milki-ram " [lmlkrm]), and more were found in 1961 by Mallowan and Oates. Of the latter, the most significant finds were excavated in "Fort Shalmaneser" in the southeast of the Nimrud site. Alan Millard published a series of these in 1962; the code "ND" is the standard excavation code for "Nimrud Documents": ND 10151 - a 9 cm label with three letters ND 10359 - a triangular plaque from a harness, with three letters ND 8184 - a curved strip, with six letters, and further smaller fragments ND 10150 - the most detailed inscription, on a fragment 9 x 5 cm, with three lines of fragmented text. This is also known as TSSI I 6, having been published in Gibson's Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions ND 10304 - an inscribed griffin, with