Art I Love: The Dying Lioness
She's originally from the palace of Nineveh, the citadel of the last great king of the Assyrians, Ashurbanipal. Around the years 645-635 BCE, a master sculptor created a series of reliefs for the king that depicted him "hunting" lions. I put hunting in quotations because it is more like ritualized slaughter, akin to bullfighting. The animals naturally don't stand a chance of escape. Far from a hunt in the wild, the massacre begins with dozens of animals brought to the killing area in cages.