Ivory Head of a Roaring Lion
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, eighth century BC
A lion's head, seven centimetres high, roars out of the ivory in high relief, its mouth open and its whiskers bristling. The eyes were inlaid and the inlay is lost, leaving deep sockets, but a greenish-brown colour still marks the lips, the nose and the tufts of hair above the eyes. The head is almost four centimetres deep, far thicker than the flat plaques around it, and it may have projected from the arm of a chair or the end of a bed. The cutting of the mane and the folds of the muzzle is bold and fast.
Lion heads were favourite fittings for royal furniture across the Near East, from the throne of Solomon described in the Bible to the beds of the Assyrian kings shown on their reliefs. This one was found in room fourteen of the Building of the Ivories at Arslan Tash, ancient Hadatu in northern Syria, in the excavations of 1928 led by François Thureau-Dangin. It came to the Louvre in the partage of 1929. The Phoenician or Syrian workshop that carved it worked from living models: lions still roamed Syria in the eighth century before our era.
Did You Know? The greenish paint on the lion's lips and nose is original, a rare survival of colour on carved ivory.
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