Master of Animals

The motif is so widespread and visually effective that many depictions probably were conceived as decoration with only a vague meaning attached to them. The Master of Animals is the "favorite motif of Achaemenian official seals", but the figures in these cases should be understood as the king.

The human figure may be standing, as found from the fourth millennium BC, or as kneeling on one knee found from the third millennium BC. They are usually shown looking frontally, but in Assyrian pieces typically they are shown from the side. Sometimes the animals are clearly alive, whether fairly passive and tamed, or still struggling, rampant, or attacking. In other pieces they may represent dead hunter's prey.

Other associated representations show a figure controlling or "taming" a single animal, usually to the right of the figure. But the many representations of heroes or kings killing an animal are distinguished from these.

Art

The earliest known depiction of such a motif may be the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (c. 6000 BC).

More examples appear on stamp seals of the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia. The motif appears on a terracotta stamp seal from Tell Telloh, ancient Girsu, at the end of the prehistoric Ubaid period of Mesopotamia, c. 4000 BC.

A Master of Animals motif also appears in the oldest known Egyptian painted tomb mural, a depiction of men, boats and animals located in Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis and dating to the Predynastic period (c. 3500-3200 BC). The motif also was given the topmost location of the famous Gebel el-Arak Knife in the Louvre, an ivory and flint knife dating from the Naqada II d period of Egyptian prehistory, which began c. 3450 BC. Here a figure in Mesopotamian dress, often interpreted to be a god, grapples with two lions. It has been connected to the famous Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley civilization (2500-1500 BC), showing a figure seated in a yoga-like posture, with a horned headress (or horns), and surrounded by animals. Of great historical importance, given its centrality to the development of Classical Greek architectural sculpture, is the West pediment of the Temple of Artemis at Corfu, dating to c. 600-580 B.C. Sculpted in the early Archaic style, the central portion of the pediment depicts a Gorgon closely flanked by two lions in a heraldic pose. The sculptor may have drawn inspiration from the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae (c. 1250 BC) (also a heraldic two-lion arrangement), with Near Eastern antecedents such as the Lion Gate at Hattusa (capital of the late Bronze Age Hittite Empire) in modern-day Turkey.

Later notable examples include the Gundestrup cauldron, which contains a depiction of a man with antlers, seated with legs part-crossed, surrounded by animals while grasping a snake in one hand and a torc in the other. This famous and puzzling object probably dates to 200 BC, or possibly as late as 300 AD, and although found in Denmark, it may have been made in Thrace.

A form of the motif appears on a belt buckle of the Early Middle Ages from Kanton Wallis, Switzerland, which depicts the biblical figure of Daniel between two lions.

The purse-lid from the Sutton Hoo burial of about 620 AD has two plaques with a human between two wolves, and the motif is common in Anglo-Saxon art and related Early Medieval styles, where the animals generally remain aggressive. Other notable examples of the motif in Germanic art include one of the Torslunda plates, and helmets from Vendel and Valsgärde.

A variant is also found in the Kingdom of Benin amongst the Benin Bronzes, where the Oba (king) is seen holding two leopards by the tail in each arm.

In the art of Mesopotamia the motif appears very early, usually with a "naked hero", for example at Uruk in the Uruk period (c. 4000 to 3100 BC), but was "outmoded in Mesopotamia by the seventh century BC". In Luristan bronzes the motif is extremely common, and often highly stylized. In terms of its composition this motif compares with another very common motif in the art of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, that of two confronted animals flanking and grazing on a Tree of Life, interpreted as representing an earth deity.