Frieze of Lions, Lion and a Half Walking Right
Unknown · Reign of Darius I, 522-486 BC
One complete lion and the rear half of a second march to the right across a panel more than three and a half metres wide. Their bodies are outlined in relief and glazed in warm yellows and whites against a blue ground, with stylised muscles curling on the shoulders and thighs. Above and below run bands of rosettes and a row of stepped crenellations, the same motifs that framed the archers in the previous room. Notice the way the tail of the front lion curves up over its back and how the raised paw suggests a slow, ceremonial pace.
The panel decorated the eastern courtyard of the palace that Darius the First built at Susa around five hundred years before Christ, where lines of lions faced each other on either side of a gateway. The moulded bricks were recovered in the eighteen eighties by the mission of Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy and shipped to Paris. There they were sorted by colour and pattern and reassembled into panels, which is why each section now carries its own letter after the inventory number.
Did You Know? The frieze was so long that the Louvre displays it in sections, and this one preserves a full lion together with the hindquarters of the animal that walked ahead of it.
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