Dying Lioness Reliefs

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

The Assyrian reliefs depicting the Dying Lioness in the lion hunt of Ashurbanipal are among the most affecting of all ancient artworks. From Heidegger’s point of view, they are not narrative images, nor are they mere royal propaganda. They are unconcealments of the truth of power, pain, and the animal world’s participation in being.

In the contorted body of the lioness—her spine pierced with arrows, her hind legs dragging—we do not find aestheticism. We find disclosure. The lioness, though a hunted beast, is shown not as victim, but as carrier of pathos, a living site of existential strife. Her pain is being-laid-bare. The earth of the relief—the stone, the depth of carving—resists and yet enables this revelation.

The world that emerges is one of violence, divine kingship, and dominion. But the lioness herself resists full capture by this world. Her suffering gestures toward another clearing, where the rawness of animal being becomes visible. Heidegger would argue that this strife—between the lioness’s dignity and her defeat—lets truth happen not as victory, but as tragic disruption of the ordinary.

The work of art here opens up a world of empire and death, but it is not propaganda. It is the presencing of strife itself, held in the muscle, the line, the eyes of the dying lioness. It is the earth crying into the world—and the world standing, momentarily, still.