ROYAL LION-HUNTING SCENE ON THE SILVER CUP OF SOLOKHA Osamu SUDZUKI Professor of Tenri University I Excavation of the Solokha Kurgan conducted by N. I. Veselovski in 1912- 13 near Nikopol on the left bank of the Dnieper was perhaps the last of the great archaeological successes in Czarist Russia(1). The main tomb-chamber under the Kurgan was found completely plundered, but the side tomb involved in the same Kurgan turned out to be one of the richest Scythian graves, including those of Cheltomlyk and Kul-oba(2), all being ascribed to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. The silver cup under consideration is one of six discovered in the same tomb (Fig. I)(3). The cup shows in relief the scene of a lion hunt by equestrian figures under an ivy garland, and we naturally tend to assume it originated from similar scenes on the wall of such Assyrian palaces as Nimrud of Ashurnasirpal (885-860B.C.) or Nineveh of Ashurbanipal (668-626B.C.). But comparing these two, we must say that the latter is much nearer to the present relief in design than the former, in that, the former depicts the lion hunt in chariots only, with no equestrian hunter included. However, the lapse of almost 300 years of time is too great a gap to assume the present piece to be the reminiscent of the Nineveh lion hunt, and the only example (1) Ebert, Max: RLV. Bd. XII, S. 294 ff. (2) Minns, E. H.: Scythians and Greeks. 1913, pp. 155 ff., 195 ff. (3) Ebert, ibid, Taf. 83: C. 37 which is qualified to interrupt the prescription is the gold dagger sheath of the Oxus Treasure, an illustration of which is partly reproduced here(4) (Fig. 2). According to O. M. Dalton, the dagger is the typical of the Scythian, rather than the Persian, akinakes, measuring 27.6cm in length, without the chape on the end. The lateral projection on the top contains two pairs of lion- hunting scenes, each consisting of two riding figures attacking a lion with lances from both sides, and on the narrow body of the sheath, measuring about 15cm long, are represented five pairs of mounted hunters on galloping horses, each shooting a lion with a short composite bow, all in the same style and in the same direction, though three of these five lions are fleeing while two are attacking the hunters on their two hind legs. Today no one will doubt the authenticity of this sheath, but it is interest- ing to follow the passage, in which Dalton eagerly defends his Median theory, by refering to Herodotus, who writes that the Assyrian King Esarhaddon, having given his daughter to a Scythian prince and the Median King Cyaxares hav- ing sent his son to Scythia to learn archery, and he assumes that the sheath was a Median product presented to a Scythian king in the 7th or 6th century B.C. from the analogous example of Vettersfelde, a traditional akinakes of the Scyths, and that the scene of lion-hunting of Oriental kings was selected "as the subject suited to the taste of a nomad huntsman."(5) However, tracing back to the original lion-hunting on the wall reliefs of the North Palace of Nineveh in the British Museum, there we first notice that the scene is not the hunting in the wild field. A lioness is depicted lying in the orchard(6), and some lions creeping out of wooden cages(7); the hunting is anything but wild, though some scenes show the cruelest aspects of killing beasts, as are generally known. Further the culminating scene of them all must be "King Ashurbanipal pouring out libations over four dead lions before the altar,"(8) so familiar to us, and over the scene a cuneiform inscription is engraved in three horizontal lines, and the epigraph in the lower register reads: "I, Assur-bani-pal, king of hosts, king of Assyria, whom Ashur and Belit have endowed with might. Against the lions that I slew I directed the powerful (4) Dalton, O. M.: The treasure of the Oxus. 2nd ed. 1926, Pl. IX, text p. 10. (5) Ibid, 1st ed. 1905, pp. 55-56. (6) Barnett, R. D.: Assyrian palace reliefs and their influence on the sculptures of Babylonia and Persia, London, n. d., Pl. 55. (7) Ibid, Pl. 93. (8) Ibid, Pl. 97. 38 ROYAL LION-HUNTING SCENE ON THE SILVER CUP OF SOLOKHA bow of Ishtar, the lady of battle, and I made an offering, and poured out a liba- tion over them."(9) The king is shown holding a bow in his left hand, and the whole scene seems to express the worship of the War and Fertility Goddess Ishtar, or Great Mother Goddess of Asia, first appeared in Elam. According to the Ishtar cult, the king offers the lions, the attribute of Ishtar(10), before the alter of the God- dess and he himself presides over the ceremony as a priest-king, in the arch-classi- cal style of the so-called Shamanism. A rough parallel is obviously perceived in the bear-cult of the Ainu tribe in North Japan, in which a baby bear is killed at the ceremony of sham hunting with a bow and arrow, after a long and affec- tionate breeding, to make their souls happily return to the Heaven, though their god has no particular name. In any respect, it is clear that the royal lion-hunting on the Oxus sheath is no more simple hunting of wild beasts than those on the Assyrian relief mentioned above, and the serpent pattern on the protruding lateral (Fig. 2) will suffice to prove its connection with Ishtar, for a serpent is also an attribution of Ishtar. Thus the equestrian figures hunting lions on the Oxus sheath is considered not having been selected because lion hunting was the fond sport of the nomads, as was explained by Dalton, but been selected for their religious sentiment: Ishtar worship, or rather Anahita worship, as is explained in the following. II If these observations are verified, the figures on the Solokha cup can not be exceptional. It is a matter of regret that the source material on the object, CompteRendu, 1912-16, has not been accessible and the plates of the cup, one in Rostovtzeff(11) and another in Ebert, differ from each other. As is reproduced in Fig. 1, the latter has the flat handles on each side, while the former has none and no trace for attaching them is perceivable, and in addition no measurement is given in either book. (Rostovtzeff also lacks the description of the object.) According to Ebert, the relief consists of two pairs of Scythian riders, each attack- ing a lion and a horned lioness, and under the handles, two lions in their nest on one side, and two beasts of pray are depicted to come out of the hole on the (9) British Museum: A guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. 3rd ed., 1922, p. 50. (10) Ackerman, Ph.: Cult figurines (A Survey of Persian Art, 1938, Vol. I), p. 204. (11) Rostovtzeff, M.: Iranians & Greeks in South Russia, 1922, Pl. XX: 1, 2. 39 other side. Further he goes to say: "Sehr moglich dass das Ganze eine Art von Opferservice dargestellt(12). (That the whole scene shows an offering service is very probable.)" We wonder on what ground Ebert's assertion is based, but apart from the scene above, we may judge from the peculiar shape of the handles and its round foot that the vessel must be of ritual use, reminding one of the copper kettle of hempseed burner with a round foot used in the Shamanistic rite, which was ex- cavated from the 2nd Kurgan(13) of Pazylk. Ebert was correct in regarding the cup as: "ein kesselartiges Gefass". On the other hand, the fish pattern in repousee on the gold plated wooden vase yielded from the same tomb(14) shows that the vase was used not for Ishtar, but for Anahita, the Iranian goddess of the river Oxus and the protector of fish as well as horses, the indispensable animal for the nomads. Anahita is the Persian version of Ishtar. According to Herodotus, the Persian learnt the worship of Urania, Heavenly Aphrodite, from the Assyrians, and called it "Mitra", and Fr. Cumont may be right in interpreting that it was wrong of Herodotus to say so, and the goddess must be Anahita, instead of Mitra.(15) These facts will show that the Scythian nobles in the Dnieper region also practised a kind of Shamanism, the worshipping of Anahita. The cup is unquestionablly of Greek workmanship, made by the order of a Scythian prince who lived on enormous profits from corn and slave trade with the Greek merchants living in such nearby cities as Panticapeion or Olbia. The Scythian prince must have intended to glorify himself by having his own lion-hunting figure depicted on the ritual cup in accordance with Iranian tradition, as is perceived on the Oxus gold sheath, cited above, and the Greek artisans executed the scene with their own traditional realism. The Greek marble relief, "Lion attacking bull"(Fig. 3), shows the striking similarity in the rendering of lions with the present cup, and this may show that the hunting scene is a pure imaginery product of the Greek artisans; there is a least possibility of practising lion-hunting among the Scythian noblemen. (12) Ebert, S. 289. (13) Rudenko, S. I.: Kultura naseleniia gornogo Altaia v skifiskoe vremia.