Carved for the North Palace at Nineveh, these reliefs show King Ashurbanipal killing lions released from cages into an arena ringed by soldiers, using arrows, spears and his sword. The king keeps a formal profile, but the lions leap, twist, collapse and die in closely observed poses. Made a generation before Nineveh fell in 612 BCE, they were probably once painted.
Look closer
Find the attendant in a small cage on top of a crate, lifting the gate to release a lion. Elsewhere a dying lioness, pierced by arrows, drags her paralysed hind legs.
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Compared by a vision model
