Lion

Following the excavation of Assyrian palaces in the mid-nineteenth century, ancient Mesopotamian imagery began to be used in European decorative arts, including jewelry and ceramics. Publicity in the form of news coverage and popular books around the excavations, removal of many sculptures from sites in northern Iraq to England and France, and public spectacles such as the reconstructed ‘Nineveh Court’ in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London, fostered a fascination with Assyria and Assyrian art among the Victorian public.

The sculpture is part of a series designed by Aaron Hays, a sculptor who worked at the British Museum, for sale both as decorative objects and as tools for teaching and study of the ancient sculptures. They are made in Parian ware, a ceramic recently developed at the Copeland factory that could be poured into molds to form complex shapes and whose pale finish was intended to evoke the Parian marble used in ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, suited to Victorian decorative tastes. This piece is based on a group of bronze lion weights from Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, now in the British Museum. The sculpture is faithful to the shape of the lion, although it omits the original weight’s semicircular handle, and even attempts to reproduce the Akkadian and Aramaic inscriptions that were written on the lion’s body. The results are not fully legible but are clear enough to show the intent. The original inscriptions both give the weight (3 royal mina), and the Akkadian adds "palace of Shalmaneser;" this is probably Shalmaneser III, r. 858–824 BCE.