GIRLgamesh and tigers: Ancient analogues and European imaginaries of Orientalized cats
(Originally posted elsewhere on 5 November 2025.)
Minor nonsense post. Fun analogues. Framing joke:
Gilgamesh vs. two lions in Mesopotamia.
GIRL(?)gamesh vs. two tigers in the Indus Valley.
As seen here.
2600 BC at Sumer (“masculine” Gilgamesh figure wrestling two lions):
From relatively far away in the Indus Valley, 1500-2500 BC at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa:
Gender!
Tigers!
Side-note:
Later Assyrian royal emblems—and also even later Achaemenid Persian emblems circa 500 BC—maintain the heroic figure wrestling two lions quite prominently. Which also might have been partial influence on why Roman artists at Palmyra (Syria) circa 300 AD depicted Roman administrators fighting two tigers representing “Persian invaders” on the so-called “Tiger Mosaic.” Persia at the time was under purview of the Sasanian empire, which consciously wanted to revive Achaemenid icons and “traditions.” AND in the decades just before the Tiger Mosaic was constructed, the Sasanid emperor Shapur had literally captured and imprisoned the Roman emperor Valerian. Meanwhile, Roman familiarity with “Persian” tigers is also displayed in Virgil’s Aeneid, where he calls them “Hyrcanian” tigers. And subsequently, by the 1500s, Shakespeare makes referencing (in Macbeth) to Hyrcanian tigers. Pretty neat back-and-forth exchange of cats in art and European awareness of tigers.
