Old Friends

Old Friends

These two lions have recently traveled a lot. Last spring, the Louvre’s (left, AO 19937 and 19938) went to the Met for an exhibition on the art of the first cities of the Middle East in the third millennium b.c.e. This spring, it’s the lion from New York (right) that has come to the Louvre, where he’s staying during the renovation of his department (Sully, room 302). These are lion-headed bronze foundation pegs from the kingdom of Urkesh, now the region of Amuda in Syria. The felines, open-mouthed, claws out, hold beneath their paws an inscribed plaque. The Louvre’s lion covers a stone tablet, also inscribed in Hurrian, a cuneiform script of which this is the most ancient attestation. The animal’s strength guaranteed that the temple where the pegs were set would last for all eternity. The temple no longer exists, but our lions still keep each other company thanks to the mutual goodwill between the two museums—as illustrated by the wonderful exhibition The Met at the Louvre, featuring ten works from the Met alongside their counterparts at the Louvre, during the temporary closure of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art in New York.