| Year | 3rd millennium BC |
|---|---|
| Type | Limestone |
| Dimensions | 8.3 cm (3.25 in) |
| Location | Private collection |
The Guennol Lioness is a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue found near Baghdad, Iraq. Depicting a well-muscled anthropomorphic lioness, it sold for $57.2 million at Sotheby's auction house on December 5, 2007. The piece was acquired by private collector Alastair Bradley Martin in 1948 and has been on display in New York City's Brooklyn Museum of Art ever since.
At the time of its sale, the price paid at auction for The Guennol Lioness was the highest for a sculpture in history, easily beating the record of Pablo Picasso's Tete de femme (Dora Maar). However on 3 February 2010, the second edition of the cast of the sculpture L'Homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) by Alberto Giacometti sold for £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) and surpassed The Guennol Lioness as the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction.[1]
The limestone piece, measuring just over 8 cm (3.25 in) tall, was described by Sotheby's as "one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands."[2] One day before the auction, experts mostly estimated the highest bid to be between $14 million and $18 million. It also beat the $28.6 million paid for "Artemis and the Stag,"[3] a 2,000-year-old bronze figure which sold also at Sotheby's in New York in June 2007 and held the record for the most expensive antiquity to be sold at auction.[4]
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The Lioness Demon, an Elamite figure believed to have been created circa 3000–2800 BC, was listed as belonging to the Brooklyn Museum of Art until it was purchased at auction by an English collector.[5] Its historical significance is that it is thought to have been created at about the same time when the first known use of the wheel, the development of cuneiform writing, and the emergence of the first cities were recorded.[6][7]
These humanlike animal figures can be seen in the top and bottom registers of the trapezoidal front panel from the famous Great Lyre from the "King's Grave" (circa 2650–2550 BC), which was discovered by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley early in the 20th century at Ur in present-day Iraq.
Many ancient Near East deities were represented in anthropomorphic figures (figures with human and animal features merged). Such humanlike animal images evoked the Mesopotamians' belief in attaining power over the physical world by combining the superior physical attributes of various species. The nearby Sumerians possibly borrowed this powerful artistic hybrid from the Proto-Elamites.[8]