Detail of the Frieze of Lions, a decorative glazed-brick frieze from the first court of Darius I’s palace at Susa, Persian Empire, 500 BC. A declaration of royal power embodied in the king of beasts. Its iconography and composition was most markedly Mesopotamian… [1920×1080] [OC]

…The Frieze of Lions is one of the rare decorative features of Darius’s palace at Susa to have been found more or less in its original place, at the foot of the north wall of the Eastern Court. The court probably housed an open-air throne. The frieze ran along the top of the wall, crowned by still-visible battlements, the whole punctuated by the tall verticals of poles that probably carried flags . The scattered fragments of a trilingual inscription were found at the same place. The lions probably stood on either side of this inscription, which would have been at the center of the symmetrical composition. This arrangement, often found in the ancient Near East, recalls the animals that face each other on either side of a palmette or tree of life.

Lions represent a substantial element in the iconography of the Persian Empire, received from Assyria and Babylon. The lion, royal animal and divine attribute, was an inhabitant of the ‘paradise,’ the enclosed hunting ground of Persian and Assyrian monarchs.

The lions are menacing: the mouth opens to show sharp teeth, the lips drawn back by the muscles visibly contracted beneath the eye, the muzzle bulging. Not yet in ferocious action, they advance in profile, with calm and measured step, between plant motifs (lotus flowers and rosettes not shown in this crop) that symbolize the equilibrium of the nature over which they preside. The same stylization of the muscles, surrounded by a broad white line, and of the hair of the mane, rendered as tongue-like locks, can be seen in the lions of the Persepolis reliefs, and in such examples of the metalworker’s art as sword-hilts, rhytons and bracelets. The bricks are twice as thick as those in the Frieze of Archers or Immortals.

In the use of glazed bricks of powdered flint with a calcareous binder and in its composition, this decorative revetment is inspired by older Mesopotamian traditions. The repetition of symbolic animals within a monumental decorative scheme can be seen already in Babylon, where its significance is more religious than royal. The Frieze of Lions is thus one of the more markedly Mesopotamian elements in Darius’s Persian palace at Susa. Yet the style, combining extreme stylization (of the musculature and the mane) with a detailed knowledge of anatomy, is typical of the masterpieces of Achaemenid Persian art.

As usual, my apologies for inaccuracies and mistakes.