The Asiatic lion in Mesopotamia symbolized the forces of chaos, which the king defeated in his role as a champion of order and civilization. Lions appear in works of art from the Early Dynastic Period through the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as a symbol of the ruler’s strength in defeating untamed forces that threatened stability.
Lions frequently attacked livestock on the Mesopotamian plains, threatened merchants traveling the roads, and killed herdsmen, shepherds, dogs, children, and others. They came, therefore, to symbolize the chaotic nature of the untamed world – the world thought to exist outside of the civilized and orderly realm of a given monarch – and so threats to that order needed to be neutralized.
Lion hunts, whether in the wild or staged in an arena or park, were reserved solely for the king. In Mesopotamian belief – whether Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, or Assyrian – humans were understood as co-workers with the gods. The gods had established order at the beginning of time, and it was up to the people to maintain it. The king, as the divinely appointed leader of his people, was expected to serve as a role model and the lion hunt, in which the lion represented the threat of chaos and destruction, provided him the opportunity to do so publicly.
Lions were depicted in statuary and reliefs to illustrate how the king had tamed the wild forces of nature – as in the lion reliefs from the walls of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon – as the lion in these works is no longer a dangerous menace roaming freely but has been caught by the king and held eternally. The king, then, took the power from the lion as his own, and so lions came to symbolize royal authority in maintaining order and supremacy over any threats to that order, in the same way that imagery associating the lion with a deity – such as Ishtar – would do. A statue or image of a lion assured the people that the king, anointed by the gods, was in control and would protect them from all dangers.
