Lion of Mari
Unknown · Early Dynastic III B or Amorite period, mid third to early second millennium BC
A lion lies with its forelegs stretched out in front of it, head raised, mouth open in a snarl that shows its teeth. Only the front half survives, about seventy-seven centimetres long, but the animal's presence fills the space. The body is made of thin sheets of copper hammered into shape and fixed with nails and rivets over a carved wooden core that has long since rotted away, leaving the metal skin to hold the form on its own. The eyes are inlaid, with white limestone around dark steatite pupils, and they give the lion a fixed, watchful glare. Look closely at the muzzle and the lines of the mane, worked in the metal by hammering from behind and chasing from the front.
Copper sculpture on this scale was a technical feat. The smith had to raise large sheets without splitting them, join them invisibly and match the modelling of the wooden core beneath. The seams and rivet heads are still visible if you follow the edges of the sheets. The lion was one of a pair placed at the entrance to a sanctuary, a guardian whose open mouth was meant to frighten off evil as much as intruders. Its partner is in the museum of Aleppo.
The two lions were found in 1937 by André Parrot's French mission at Mari, on the middle Euphrates in Syria, inside a building the excavator called the temple of Dagan and that is now often known simply as the Temple of the Lions. Their date is debated. The temple was long assigned to the reign of Zimri-Lim, the king whose palace painting hangs in this room, around 1780 before our era, but many scholars now place the lions several centuries earlier, in the Early Dynastic period of the mid third millennium, on the strength of their style. The lion came to the Louvre through the partage of finds and remains one of the finest surviving pieces of ancient Near Eastern metal sculpture.
Did You Know? The wooden body inside the copper skin rotted away thousands of years ago, so the lion you see is essentially a hollow metal shell that has kept its own shape.
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