One of rooms in the British Museum contains a series of reliefs originally carved into the walls of a palace by the Akkadians, or Assyrians, or something equally ancient and Mesopotamian. They depict a lion hunt, what the guidebook describes as the ’sport of kings’, where a bunch of guys in chariots chase starved wild animals in an enclosed area and shoot them full of arrows. There entire sequence is probably over 50m long, a giant panorama of stylized animal slaughter taking up an entire room. We had wandered that particular wing purely by accident. I was immediately taken aback by how incredibly cruel it seemed.
Jeez, they really don’t hide the gore, do they?
“Wow, I think this one is puking,” Nick says, pointing at a carving of a particularly arrow-studded lion which was in fact vomiting.
Urgh.
“The placard says the animals were kept caged until the riders were ready, and then goaded and provoked until they attacked.”
Jeez. Wow, the zoology major in me is really not liking this right now.
“Look at this one, David,” Gloria says, pulling my arm. She points to a dead(?) lioness being run over by a chariot carrying two bow-wielding hunters. “Poor lion.”
Grace walks over. “This is so sad.”
God, this is kind of making me, sick, I say. Fuck cultural relativism, this is ridiculous. I can’t look at this anymore.
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