The power and aggression usually associated with the lions as depicted through most of art’s history is called in the question somewhat by this ancient Iraqi relief sculpture. While the title given this ivory piece shows the most obvious interpretation, there is also some debate as to the sexual nature of the figures. The boy’s head is thrown back in what could be read as pain or as rapture, and the lioness wraps one paw around the boy’s neck in an embrace. There is a correlation between this sexualized vision of the piece and the violent one and combining the two results in a moment of passionate violence, whether the passion or the violence is the main player is up to the viewer.
Another interpretation which has been offered up is that there is a strange kind of motherliness in the lioness’ embrace, that she cradles the figure of the (dying?) boy. There is without a doubt respect for lions as creatures of power and of some stature in the piece, and the respect that that ancients had of them equals the awe. As anthropomorphic figures have also appeared in ancient art, the question of the lioness’ mother-like stance leads us to the ideas of legends and the depiction of men as part lion (such as the Pharaohs) and even women are anthropomorphized as in the case of the Egyptian Sphinx.
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