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I went to visit some old friends today, so here's a mini-thread on the incredible lion hunt reliefs of Assyria's King Ashurbanipal 
Somewhere btween 645-635 BCE, about 200yrs before the first stones of the Parthenon were laid, King Ashurbanipal commissioned these carvings
The friezes were carved to decorate the walls of the North Palace of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire at the time.
The Assyrian Empire at its height was the greatest empire the world had ever known, and it fell all at once in dramatic fashion c.612 BCE
The lion hunt friezes show King Ashurbanipal, the last great King of Assyria, engaged in a ritual hunting of lions.
The hunt was a highly orchestrated event, and seems to have represented the king's duty to protect his subjects, and mastery over nature
A surviving clay tablet records that if a lion entered a house in the Assyrian provinces, it had to be trapped and taken by boat to the king
The carvings contain some incredible details: for instance these children in compartments above the lions' cages, tasked with releasing them
I especially love this tableau of commoners hurrying over this wooded hill to see the hunt. And what's that on top of the hill?
Computer, enhance image!
It's a tiny lion hunt carving-within-a-carving! The Assyrians were playing around with recursion 25 centuries ago...
The most curious detail for me is that a couple of the lions have had the length of their tails corrected quite obviously. Who did this?
Although there is no evidence, I like to think that it was King Ashurbanipal himself who thought that the lions' tails were too long.
Think about it: if you're working for the king to decorate his palace, would you damage the carvings so obviously for such a small detail?
So as well as contributing to the invention of writing, city living & agriculture, Mesopotamia might have also invented the micro-manager
Another striking aspect is where the artist's sympathies seem to lie. It's impossible to tell of course, but many feel it is with the lions
Consider this: while the human figures are represented traditionally in profile, only this lion stares out of the frame at the viewer
To me this always feels like a challenge to the viewer: those dark, sunken eyes. But we can only guess at the artist's feelings!
Thanks for listening! Go see the Assyrian lion hunt yourself if you're in the British Museum. There's nothing like seeing them for yourself!
