(i6f> TH?: ANTIQUITY OF THE LION IN GREECE. 



' According to the Old Testament, the lion was common in the Leba- 

 non region and even on the Jordan. It occurred in Palestine until 

 the twelfth century (the time of the Crusaders)." In Syria its exist- 

 ence can be traced from the earliest historical times to the present 

 day. According to Perrot and Chipiez,'' Amenophis Til (1400 b. c.) 

 is proved to have chased the lion in northern Syria on a large scale. 

 Only twenty years ago, according to Tristram (loc. cit.), the body of 

 ;i lion was brought to Damascus. In Kgypt proper, lions but rarel}^ 

 occurred,'' while in northern Syria they must have been quite numerous. 

 Ancient writers also — Xenophon, Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny, and others — 

 speak of lion hunts in Syria and in Arabia. The lions in the latter 

 country are said to have been more powerful and mmierous than in 

 Lybia. Tristram states that in Mesopotamia the lion is at present 

 conmion. Layard, in the middle of the last century, heard its roaring 

 not far from Bagdad. In the north it occurs on the Tigris as far as 

 Kalaat Schergat, on the Euphrates as far as Bir,''and, lastly, in Persia, '^ 

 where the lion is especially found "in the forest slopes of the Zagros," 

 the chief mountain region of Persia. Abbott' mentions the lion 

 among the animals of Khorasmia.^/ On its occurrence in northwest 

 India, see Blandford (loc. cit.) and Dawkins.'' 



Considering all this, I hold it not well to be doubted, from reasons 

 of natural science, that in Herodotus's time lions still lived in the 

 regions named by him, and I hold it not impossible that the ancient 

 lion representations in Greece, such as a lion chase upon a Mycen^an 



«H. B. Tristram, The Survey of Western Palestine, 1884, p. 17. Comp. also his 

 Natural History of the Bible, 7th ed., 1883, p. 116 sq. 



b Geschichte der Kunst ini Altertum: Aegypten, German translation liy R. Pietsch- 

 mann, p. 862, 1884. 



t-' "The artists of the new empire were encouraged to a frequent representation of 

 the lion alwve all through the renewed acquaintance with the animal itself, and one 

 might think that this Asiatic lion possessed their imagination when they depict lions 

 either with a very light mane or with none at all, if both varieties did not appear at 

 Beni Hassan. At all events the lion with heavy mane is the more original type in 

 Egyptian art . . . Only very rarely do the forms of the lion in Egyptian represen- 

 tations indicate the Assyrian type. The heraldic use of animals upon shields and 

 pectorals is also of Asiatic origin, appearing in the second Theljean empire in pictures 

 which exhibit gryphons, jackals, and lions." (Perrot and Chipiez, loc. cit.) Thus 

 there oct-ur upon Egyptian monuments both the Egyptian and the Asiatic types of 

 lions (l)oth wild and tamed), with a noticeable difference, which is worth considera- 

 tion also in other parts of ancient archfeology, as, for instance, in the study of the 

 Greeks. 



^Nineveh, vol. n, p. 48, 1849. 



^Eastern Persia, vol. ii. Zoology and Geology, by \Y. T. Blandford, 1876, p. 29, 

 and AV. Geiger, Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, vol. ii, j^t. 3, p. 382, 1897. 



/Narrative of a journey from Heraut to Khiwa, London, 1843, vol. ii, p. 2.5, 

 supplement. 



9' Comp. Pictet, Les Origines indo-europ., 2d ed., vol. i, p. .529, Paris, 1877. 



A Die Hohlen, etc., 1876, p. 312. 



