SOME INSIGHTS INTO THE ORIGINS AND MEANING OF THE KILLING OF A LION SCENE ON AN ARCHAIC LYCIAN DYNASTIC TOMB

The subject of this article is the so-called Lion Tomb found at Xanthos, the principal settlement of the Lycian Dynastic period. This tomb dates to the middle of the sixth century B.C. and is a good example of traditional Lycian pillar tomb architecture built for high-ranked officials and rulers. Its relief decoration offers insights into the ways in which the deceased wished to represent themselves. The scene on the Lion Tomb s western facade represents the deceased in two aristocratic poses. The left panel shows him seating on a throne, while the right panel depicts him standing naked (?) fighting a lion, stabbing the animal with a short sword. The lion is drawn in profile, looking straight at the spectator. The animal stands upright, leaning on his attacker s knees and shoulders. The article investigates how this in origin Mesopotamian iconography was transferred to Lycia and evaluates its role in a programme of self-propaganda sustained by Lycia s leading class during the Lycian Dynastic period. Two approaches are used in the discussion of the iconographic background to the Killing of Lion scene. Firstly the Assyrian iconographic tradition of an actual person, a king, killing a lion will be considered. Secondly the scene can also hark back to Greek mythology, showing Heracles killing Nemea s lion. It is concluded that the iconography of the Lion Tomb fits in a continuous iconographic tradition, originating in the East and inherited by the Late Hittite kings. The Lycian rulers, in their turn, adopted the scene with the explicit aim of identifying themselves with the great eastern kings. In this light B. Jacobs question as to why eastern, Achaemenid influences can be observed in Lycian funeral reliefs of the fifth and fourth century B.C., whereas the same scenes do not occur in the Persian heartland itself can now be solved by interpreting these Achaemenid stylistic elements as Assyrian in origin, but conveyed to Lycian craftsmen through the Late Hittite workshops, thus bypassing Persia.