Panel of the Frieze of Lions
Unknown · Reign of Darius I, 522-486 BC
A single lion strides across the wall, tail raised, jaws parted, its mane rendered as a thick collar of stylised locks. The animal stands about three and a half metres above the floor on its band of coloured brick, and its muscles are drawn as decorative curls on the flank and haunch. As with the archers, the design was moulded in low relief before the bricks were glazed, so the outline of the beast catches the light. Notice the rows of rosettes and the stepped battlement motif that frame the animal above and below.
Lions were the royal animal of the ancient Near East, hunted by kings and painted on their palaces from Assyria to Babylon. Darius the First borrowed the idea for the eastern court of his palace at Susa, where such panels alternated with floral borders. The bricks were unearthed by the Dieulafoy mission in the eighteen eighties and brought to Paris, where they were reassembled into the friezes now displayed here and in the neighbouring room. Their soft blue and yellow glazes give a good idea of how colourful a Persian palace once was.
Did You Know? The lion frieze ran along the walls of the palace's eastern courtyard, so anyone waiting for an audience with the Great King was watched by a procession of lions.
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