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oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
@serbiaireland
Apr 4, 2021 • 12 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Thread: Why did Assyrian kings like lion hunt so much? According to the Assyrian reliefs, the favorite occupation of the Assyrian kings in peace was a lion hunt...The earliest depictions show the king hunting lions from a chariot using bow and arrows... Image
The later depictions show the king fighting lions on foot. On some of these depictions the king still used bow and arrows to kill the lion... Image
But on most of the reliefs, the king was depicted killing a lion with a spear... Image
Or killing a lion with a sword... Image
I wonder if this was just a sport or was there some religious reason for this lion hunt? This image depicts the Assyrian king pouring libation in a temple on 4 dead lions...Why? As a thanks to the gods for helping him kill the lions? Or are the lions an offering to the gods? Image
You know how lion is the animal calendar marker which represents the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia and Levant...The time of death caused by drought...Because beginning of August, middle of Leo, is the beginning of the main mating season of Eurasian lions... ImageImage
This is why we find lion depicted with the same heat rays radiating from his back also depicted radiating from the back of the sun god Utu/Shamash oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/12/lion-r… Image
This is also why in the oldest Mesopotamian depictions, dragons, symbols of the Mesopotamian summer (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and destructive sun's heat, have lion's bodies oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/07/seven-… Image
And you know how it is "the killing of the lion dragon by the thunder god", which signals the end of the hot dry half of the year...And the beginning of the cool wet part of the year, when rain and abundance return to Mesopotamia and Levant...
Was the Assyrian king slaying the lion a symbolic reenactment of the Sky, Rain, Thunder god, slaying the lion dragon? Did Assyrian kings actually have to kill lions to prove that they are indeed divinely ordained to rule?
Any Assyriologists with nothing better to do, who can contribute to this thread?

Images are from "The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World Volume II" by George Rawlinson. English scholar, historian, and Christian theologian (1812-1902)" gutenberg.org/files/16162/16…
There is already one very interesting contribution. Thank you @GOTtheJs

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More from @serbiaireland

oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Apr 18
Thread: Strap in. This is going to be fun. In this thread I am going to talk about the first raw of panel from the 1st c. AD Roman monument known as the "Pillar of the Boatmen" found in Paris, France... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_of…Image
I was prompted to look into it by the posts by this great account @Michssspp82096 about this panel which depicts a bull standing under a willow tree, with 3 cranes perched on his back. The inscription reads "TARVOS TRIGARANOS" or "Bull and Three Cranes" in Gaulish... Image
@Michssspp82096 This is a coloured version of this image. It looks cool, but the colours are wrong...The only cranes native to France are Common Cranes and their feathers are grey not white and their legs are black not orange... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cr…Image
Image
Read 45 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Aug 11, 2025
Thread: Late Sassanian depiction of a deity on a column capital now held in Taqe Bostan , which @persiaantiqua identified as Mehr (Mithra) based on the fact that he is surrounded by blooming lotuses... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taq-e_Bos…Image
Mithra was directly associated with lotus, to the point where on the most famous relief of Mithra, the one from Taqe Bostan, he is actually depicted standing on a lotus flower, radiating light, while witnessing Ahura Mazda giving ring of power to king Ardashir II... Image
Why Lotus? Mitra originates in India. Where he was, in the earliest times, directly associated with Varuna, the old Monsoon good whose Vahana was a crocodile, an animal calendar marker for the monsoon season in India....

Read 28 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Aug 6, 2025
Thread: Two Sassanian wall relief slabs dated to the 5th-6th c. AD, depicting rampant ibex goats flanking "the tree of life"... Image
Image
This is an ancient symbol found throughout Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Levant, Crete. The reason for that is that in all these regions, year is divided into two halves:

hot, dry half, roughly Apr/May - Oct/Nov
wet, cool half, roughly Oct/Nov - Apr/May Image
And the wet, cool half begins when ibex goats start their mating fights...see, "flanking"... Image
Image
Read 11 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Aug 1, 2025
Thread: 900-700 BC Syro-Hittite relief from Carchemish which everyone believes depicts the ancient Sumerian Hero Gilgamesh as master of animals, holding the horn of a bull and the leg of a lion. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Ankara, Turkey). Who is this dude really? Image
If we interpret the animals as animal calendar markers, which they always are in compositions like this, The Dude (with big D) stands in the moment when bull (summer) ends and lion (autumn) begins (end of Jul start of Aug)...

The moment usually depicted like this
Read 11 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Jun 23, 2025
Thread: Poseidon, Greek god of the sea was associated with waves (obvious), horses (not so obvious, unless you know about animal calendar markers and the link between the horse mating season and the sailing season in eastern Mediterranean) and earthquakes (???)... Image
Why earthquakes? Look at this: Map of the Greek region showing the epicenters of the intermediate depth earthquake activity...

researchgate.net/publication/25…Image
Big earthquakes trigger tsunamis. If you lived on these islands, observing this for millennia, you would eventually start believing that it is the god of waves, Poseidon, that is also creating earthquakes, as the big earthquakes are always accompanied with big waves...
Read 8 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Jun 9, 2025
Thread: Silver Stater from Mallos, Cilicia, C. 425-385 BC. Depicting (???)

Obv: Winged male deity advancing right, holding solar disc; Aramaic legend.
Rev: MAΛP , swan standing to left, flapping its wings. Rare.

I would suggest that this is (a local version of) Apollo... Image
An anthropomorphised, Hellenised, version of the winged sun disc...Like this one depicted on Stele to Assurnasiripal II at Nimrud (9th c. BC)... Image
BTW, do you see the Sun Cross (Cross of Shamash) inside the winged Sun Disc? I talked about Sun Cross (of Shamash) here
Read 9 tweets

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