Abstract
This paper explores the ambiguous Persian Achaemenid attitude towards the horse and the lion. It examines the way these animals appear in imperial official presentations, local artifacts throughout the empire and Greek textual representations. In the case of the stallion, it looks at the imagery of horse riding or the place of the horse in society and religion alongside the employment of steeds in chariots. Images of the lion are addressed in instances where it appears to be respected as having a significant protective power and as the prey of the chase. This paper attempts to show that this ambiguity corresponds roughly to the dual image of the Persians as both pre-imperial/nomad and imperial/sedentary (and hence allegedly luxurious), a schism that is manifest in both the self-presentation of the Achaemenids and in the Greek texts.
Highlights
This paper explores the ambiguous Persian Achaemenid attitude towards the horse and the lion
Compare the episode involving Alexander the Great and Lysimachus, echoing the incident of Artaxerxes I and Megabyzus.2. This concise picture presents the two animals which were at the very core of the Persian imperial ideology, and which are the subject of the present paper, namely the horse and the lion
The last aspect to note with regard to the horse in Persia is its role in religious rites, where it was sacrificed in honor of the sun
Summary
The domestication of the horse (Equus caballus) occurred in the fourth millennium in the Eurasian plains, and appeared in the Ancient Near East already in the second millennium BCE. In both nomadic and sedentary types of society, the domesticating of BCE. A noticeable change is the growing importance of the chariot as a symbol of the central power and the growing remoteness of the king from the horse, with the ensuing lessening stress on the abilities of the king as a rider This is at once both a return to the earliest stage of the employment of the horse, and a transition to a seemingly more refined state of the imperial Persians. This portrayal goes along with the Greek depictions of the decadent king as never touching the ground with his feet, occasionally confusing the (war) chariot (ἅρμα) with the carriage (ἁρμάμαξα, covered four wheeled vehicle), a token of luxury.. BM inv. no. 89132 (reg. no. 1835,0630.1); see (Frankfort 1939, p. 221, pl. 37d; Curtis and Tallis 2005, no. 398)
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