From them, scholars learned everything from land deals and taxes to how much haoma, the sacred intoxicating drink, should be used during religious services. Hundreds of cuneiform tablets, preserved by their baking in the fires that consumed the rest of the city, filled out the details of life in ancient Persepolis. Over the multi-acre site, the excavation uncovered everything from the kings’ cups and bowls to the treasures looted during the Achaemenid conquests of other kingdoms. Many of these were still standing two millennia later, when the OI began a pioneering excavation that spanned eight years and required hundreds of workmen. Left behind, however, were columns and halls, staircases and gates-all finely carved by the craftsmen of the Achaemenid royal court. But after just two centuries, Persepolis-and the empire-fell when Alexander the Great’s armies sacked the city in 330 B.C.Īccording to Roman historian Plutarch, it took 20,000 mules and 5,000 camels to carry away the treasure Alexander’s army looted from Persepolis. Rising to power in approximately 550 B.C., the Achaemenid Empire was the largest empire the world had known its extensive central administration set the model for later empires and is an essential piece of understanding the journey of human civilization.
“In the relief, these noble and powerful animals are marshalled to reflect the power and prestige of the empire.” Evans, chief curator and deputy director of the OI Museum.
“The image of a lion and bull in combat has a long tradition in the ancient Middle East, stretching back thousands of years,” said Jean M. “Looking at this monumental imagery gives you insights into the imperial ideology-how the Achaemenid kings conceived of themselves and the identity they wanted to project,” said Woods, a leading scholar of Sumerian language and writing. The relief dates to about the fourth century B.C., when Persepolis stood as the ceremonial center of the Achaemenid Empire, which spanned much of the ancient Middle East. “The beauty and majesty of the relief just leaps out at you.” “We are thrilled to have this magnificent relief back in Chicago to help celebrate the OI’s century of transformative research on the ancient Middle East,” said Christopher Woods, director of the OI and the John A.
#Perian mac lion series#
The rare artifact is available for public viewing at the Oriental Institute Museum starting on September 28th, when the OI will host a public celebration-the first in a yearlong series of centennial events open to the University community and the general public. But it has returned to the University of Chicago in honor of the OI’s 100th anniversary as one of the world’s foremost research centers on the civilizations of the ancient Middle East. The giant stone relief remained there among the ruins until 1931, when the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute began a landmark excavation of the site-and gave the lion and bull a second life.įor the past 80 years, the 4,000-pound stone relief was on loan to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The two animals were meant to reflect the prestige of this vast Persian empire, which fell in 330 B.C. when Alexander the Great sacked and burned Persepolis and its opulent palaces. The lion and the bull have been fighting, locked in stone, for nearly 2,500 years-ever since an ancient sculptor carved them into a slab of black limestone and set them into a monumental staircase at Persepolis, the royal center of the great Achaemenid Empire.
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