From Nineveh to Knidos - Lion Tamers of the Ancient World

Submitted by Sean Williams on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 12:51

The potency of a lion’s image isn’t exactly hard to argue. The majestic yet deadly creatures have thrilled humans since the dawn of man, and it’s no surprise that some of the ancient world’s greatest civilizations have held lions up as a focus of worship. So where and how have the fearsome felines been depicted by ancient peoples all over the globe? And where are these beasts being caged today?

Lions in Mesopotamia

The Cradle of Civilization had long been coming under Assyrian rule by 700 BC. From its powerful capitals in the north like Nimrud, Dar-Sharrukin and, most famously, Nineveh, the Assyrian kings continued a reign of tyranny, military might and cultural expansion that swallowed up illustrious southern city states such as Babylon, Kish, Nippur and Ur. Iron-fisted kings like Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II and Sennacherib built Assyria into one of the world’s most imperious empires, with the vast wealth and labour force it acquired from numerous campaigns going towards making its capital cities some of the most stunning and populous in the world.

Hunting had always been a popular passstime with the Assyrian people, with elephants, leopards, boar, deer and antelope – rife in the area at the time – pursued for their meat, as well as the respect and prestige men would garner for their hunting skills. It was the fearsome lion, however, with its predatory looks and instinct, which would prove the most prized of all big game in the region, with only kings able to hunt the magnificent creatures. Indeed, in keeping with the distinct lack of humility Assyria’s kings liked to show, Ashurnasirpal II (883 – 859 BC) boasted: “I killed 30 elephants with the bow, 257 powerful wild bull, I killed them from my war chariot, I killed 370 strong lions just by spear like birds in a cage.” However many years this unlikely feat took to achieve, it is apparent that the lion is the crowning glory in Ashurnasirpal’s achievement; the cherry on the cake; the Babylonian’s head on the spike of his kingly control.

Sennacherib was no monarch to pulled punches either, squeezing every last drop out of his people to build a fine new headquarters from his new capital at Nineveh. Among the incredible improvements he made to the bustling metropolis, the greatest and most startling must surely have been his royal palace, the ‘Palace without Rival.’ This goliath of opulence and clout stood 80 rooms strong, with two throne suites and several large courtyards. It was such a sight that it was mooted as one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, a belief compounded with its two miles-plus row of huge bas-reliefs.

These incredible tablets show the royal lion hunt in its entirety, and in impressive detail. Scenes show the lions being speared in an orgy of blood and vomit, the king sitting atop one of Assyria’s famed war chariots while he spears the creatures. The constant repetition of the kill throughout the reliefs, the proud posture of the king and his hundreds of servants showed his all-conquering power – and the ornate intricacy of the lions’ demise serves to emphasise the pain the king can inflict – on both the lion and his human enemies. A strange inclusion to the scenes is the fact that many, if not all, of the lions were caged and then released by the king’s servants to be slaughtered. Maybe this showed that the king didn’t even need to hunt, but merely to inflict the final act of killing?

That’s not to say that the Assyrians saw lions as a mere tool to raise their profiles. On the contrary, the giant Lamassu sculptures which have effectively become the symbols of the empire were either human-headed winged bulls or lions; striding gallantly between the gates of the great palaces of Nineveh, Nimrud and Dar-Sharrukin. They gave their bloodthirsty masters godly and worldly protection, and socialised the masses by matching their leaders with the most feared animals on the planet.

Nabopolassar’s vengeful swipe at the Assyrians in 612 heralded the end of the empire, and the beginning of the dominance of the Chaldean Babylonians. Yet the lions which had stood and died at the hands of their fallen Assyrian keepers had far from run their course as symbols of Near Eastern dominance. The Babylonians carried the monstrous mantle with great zeal, plastering the creatures’ images all over their most famous monuments. One only has to peek at Nebuchadnezzar’s formidable Ishtar Gate (a replica of which now stands in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum) to see how the empire used the lion in much the same way as their Assyrian cousins – as a sentry to evoke awe in the city itself, and to inspire passion and confidence in the myriad campaigns Nebuchadnezzar and other Chaldeans were conducting elsewhere.

Reverance in Egypt

It’s no secret animals were held in high esteem in Egypt, where crocodiles, hippopotamuses, and cats were all believed to have deific qualities. If you go to any museum worth its salt you’ll stumble across anything from mummified dogs to goldfish (really). And with the lion being the largest and strongest of all cats, it’s no wonder they were worshipped as gods on earth. The most famous example, of course, is the Great Sphinx at Giza – the largest monolith statue in the world, built in the 3rd millennium BC by the great pharaoh Khafra to keep a watchful eye – and paw – over his huge pyramid. However, there’s more to the Egyptian veneration of the lion than Khafra’s giant guardian. The Egyptian god Mahes had the head of a lion, and his cult was centred on the city of Leontopolis, ‘the city of the lion’. However mummified remains of lions had remained elusive until the 2001 discovery of a full lion’s skeleton in the tomb of Tutankhamen’s wet nurse Maia in the Saqqara necropolis. The reasons for its existence have been debated extensively among Egyptologists, with some attributing it to Mahes while others believe it to have been seen as the incarnation, or dedication to, Mahes’ mother Sekhmet. Sekhmet had the head of a lioness, and was said to represent the darker side of the cat goddess Bastet.

Military Might of Greece

The ancient Greeks were no stranger to the potency of a well-placed lion image either. And even two thousand years after Khafra placed the legendary sphinx in front of his pyramid, powerful provincial Greeks were using the creature’s image to warn potential attackers away from their islands chocked full of treasures. Lions were already deeply intertwined with Greek religion and mythology in stories such as that of the Nemean Lion, who went on a killing rampage in the district of Nemea in the Argolis until Heracles was brought in to destroy him within his own cave. The ancient city of Mycenae, which predated Athenian Greece, was also steeped in lion imagery – with its hallowed Lion Gate a major focal point for the ca1500 BC settlement.

Yet it would be around a millennium later around 350 BC that the rich merchant barons of Knidos would use the lion’s fearsome image to keep their shores free of pirates and aggressors. They created a colossal 7-tonne lion which lay at the summit of its rolling hills, keeping a watchful eye on the sailors on their way to and from Anatolia. The sculpture fits in with almost no other local work – and the fact its eyes would have been inlaid with coloured glass suggests that its use was akin to that of the lions of Assyria, Babylon and Greece – as a threatening warden, indicative of the island’s military might and wealth. The lion may have travelled a long way in years, but its place in the minds and might of the rulers of the ancient world had barely moved an inch. Yet these gilded guardians of the world’s greatest cities were to wind up a diaspora of the developed world; snatched from their formerly formidable homes and settled into giant houses of imperialism by modern lion-catchers.

Pride of the Empires

All of the aforementioned lions have been taken (snatched would perhaps be a better description) from their original homes and placed into foreign care (all but the Great Sphinx; surely a bridge too far for all but the truly space-aged logistical minds). Knidos’ proud lion now stands – or sits – a shadow of its former fearsome self in the British Museum’s Great Court, thanks to the Victorian explorer C. T. Newton. Newton’s 1857 expedition saw him literally unearth the lion and haul it back to London under the flag of the same loosely-defined Ottoman firman (excavation permit) similar to the one which allowed Lord Elgin to uproot the infamous Elgin Marbles from 1810 – 1812.

Similarly, Assyria’s myriad Lamassu are now housed in museums across the globe, from (that’s right) the BM to the NY Met and Paris’ Louvre. The two miles of lion hunt bas-reliefs were also lost from Nineveh’s Palace without Rival, when Henry Layard rolled into Mosul with financial backing from Sir Stanford Canning, a wealthy foreign envoy, in 1845. Layard barely left an artefact in its place, with only the broken and worthless remnants left to fester – and in some cases be looted – in modern Iraq. And with many of Babylon’s lions left to rot and crumble under the ersatz remodelling of Saddam Hussein, nearly all of Mesopotamia’s once roaring lions have been left to whimper in dimly-lit display rooms. Of course the issue of repatriation is a sensitive issue nowadays – the Greeks in particular laying vehement claim to Knidos’ great feline. Do these great creatures belong to societies bearing almost no similarities to their ancestral compatriots? And if not, should they instead be wheeled around the world on a regular basis? Whatever the outcome, it seems a shame that, while poignant reminders of the power of lions and their ancient owners, museums have dimmed these big cats’ roars to timid mews.

Images by (from top) ElissaSCA, Paul Mannix, Nikki & Michi, Jon Himoff.

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About The Author

Sean Williams

Sean is an English Literature graduate, who currently works as a writer and journalist in London. He enjoys ancient history, theatre and sport. He does not enjoy Big Brother.

Last three pieces by this author: AWiL Video Series: Illuminating Hadrian's Wall at the Edge of the Roman Empire, Illuminating Hadrian's Wall - Heritage Key's visit to the Light Up!, AWiL Video Series - Queen Boudicca: Celtic Fashion and the Battle of Watling Street

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