Thread by @PaulMMCooper

The Asiatic lion was once the terror of the ancient near east, & for thousands of years left an indelible mark on its art & architecture.

Here's a thread exploring the lion's footprint in the cultures of ancient Iraq, Iran & Turkey, with some modern photos for comparison.

Smaller than their African cousins but no less fierce, the Asiatic lion's fur ranges from tawny to sandy or grey, sometimes with a silvery sheen in certain lights.

Their scant mane means the ears of the male are always visible.

(lion statue in Persepolis, Iran)

The historical range of the Asiatic Lion included eastern Turkey, Iran, Mesopotamia, & from east of the Indus River to Bengal & Narmada River in Central India.

(“The Lion of Babylon” in Babylon, Iraq. Possibly brought as spoils from Hittite lands.)

Seen as the most fearsome of animals, images of lions appeared prominently in palace architecture throughout the region.

The ruins of Persepolis, Iran, show a carving of a stylised lion leaping on a bull, possibly also depicting the astrological ascendancy of Leo over Taurus.

Lions also famously guard the gate of the Hittite capital of Hattusa in modern Turkey, acting here as guardians against evil.

For ancient people, lions had a metaphorical function, representing the purest embodiment of the ferocity of nature. They were the principal force against which civilised society saw itself pitted.

(Elamite copper lion, c. 2000 BCE)

Protecting citizens from the danger of lions (and the wider dangers of nature that lions represented) was seen as one of the main duties of the monarch, & indeed of the civilisational project as a whole.

(Sumerian guardian lion)

Lions were a metaphor, but they were also a very real threat. One bad year, Assyrian records recall,

‘The hills resound with their roaring. The other wild animals tremble… The bodies of men, cows and sheep lie in mounds as though the plague has killed them.’

(lion from Elam)

One translated cuneiform letter is from a servant who has accidentally trapped a lion that has got into the house while his master is away.

When his master is slow in replying to his letters, he begins feeding the lion so that it doesn’t get hungry enough to break out.

Lions were an everyday problem, then, but they were also a regal and religious symbol.

Associated with the goddess Ishtar, they featured prominently in temple as well as palace architecture.

(Head of a lion temple guardian from Babylon)

Lions were a symbol of majesty and empire. Along with mythical creatures, they adorn the grand, blue-tiled Ishtar Gate that once stood in Babylon, southern Iraq.

A similar depiction, but with less realism than the Babylonian lion, are the lions of Susa, an Elamite city in modern Iran.

Perhaps the most famous depictions of the Asiatic Lion are in the Royal Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal.

These reliefs from the North Palace of Nineveh, in present-day Mosul, are widely regarded as "the supreme masterpieces of Assyrian art".

(CW: ancient animal cruelty)

Assyrian carvings of lions began in the same way as other parts of the region: as stylised and slightly disproportionate.

This cruder example, for instance, is from the Nimrud palace of King Ashurnasirpal, in the C9th BCE, some 200 years earlier.

By the age of King Ashurbanipal (668 – c.627 BCE), the art had reached its full maturity.

The reliefs show the king in an arena, where captured Asiatic lions were released from cages for him to slaughter with arrows, spears, or sword.

The realism of the lions is incredible. While the human figures are seen in formal poses in profile, the lions are in a great variety of poses, alive, dying, and dead.

Their expressions seem to betray human emotions completely absent in the human characters.

These lion carvings also now hold a secret poignancy:

By 612 BCE, perhaps as little as 25 years after these were made, the entire Assyrian Empire had collapsed, & the great capital of Nineveh had been sacked & burned.

Most Assyrian kings boasted of killing hundreds of lions in their lifetimes.

While these reports are no doubt exaggerated, sadly the history of the lion’s relationship with humanity has always been one characterised by slaughter.

The final Asiatic lions were killed in Iran in the 1940s, & since then there have been no subsequent sightings.

Hunted to near extinction, the only remaining population of Asiatic Lions is currently in the Gir Forest reserve in Gujarat, India.

(Lion on a decorative panel from Darius I the Great's palace at Susa)

At one time, there were only a few hundred Asiatic lions left in the world. The species is still heavily endangered, but today the population is growing.

(A Sumerian cylinder seal, depicting a king hunting a lion while watched over by the God Ashur)

If you enjoyed this thread & want to donate to help conserve these beautidul animals, you can donate to ZSL's Asiatic Lion campaign here: zsl.org/support-us/zsl…

Another list of worldwide charities working with lions is here: savingwild.com/2015/08/11/9-b…

(Assyrian lion statue)

Thanks for listening!

To finish, here is an 1878 painting by Orientalist Frederick Arthur Bridgman, depicting Ashurbanipal hunting lions with his bow: "The Diversion of an Assyrian King"

If you enjoyed this, you can find more of my research into Mesopotamian history in this thread-of-threads.

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