The Lion of Knidos is the name for a colossal

ancient Greek statue The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monume ...

erected near the ancient port of

Knidos Knidos or Cnidus (; grc-gre, Κνίδος, , , Knídos) was a Greek city in ancient Caria and part of the Dorian Hexapolis, in south-western Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the southern side ...

, south-west

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

(now near

Datça Datça is a district of Muğla Province in south-west Turkey, and the center town of the district. The center is situated midway through the peninsula which carries the same name as the district and the town ( Datça Peninsula). It was a nahiya of ...

in Turkey). Although there is some debate about the age of the sculpture, in general, scholarly opinion dates it to the 2nd century BC. Since 2000, it has been prominently displayed on a plinth under the roof of the

Queen Elizabeth II Great Court The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, commonly referred to simply as the Great Court, is the covered central quadrangle of the British Museum in London. It was redeveloped during the late 1990s to a design by Foster and Partners, from a 1970s ...

because soon after it was seen by British archaeologists in 1858, the statue was taken by the British to London where it became part of the British Museum's collection.British Museum Collectio
The Lion of Knidos
British Museum, retrieved 30 November 2013

Description

This sculpture of a recumbent lion was quarried from Mount Pentelikon near Athens, the same marble used to build the

Parthenon The Parthenon (; grc, Παρθενών, , ; ell, Παρθενώνας, , ) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considere ...

. The lion is substantially complete; only the lower jaw and front legs are missing; its eyes were probably once inlaid with glass. The statue is greater than life-size; it weighs six tonnes and measures 2.89 metres long and 1.82 metres high. In designing the body to be hollowed out from below, the weight of the statue was reduced. The statue stood on top of a funerary monument that is of a style fashionable in 350 BC in Halikarnassos, a centre that was only a day away by boat. The monument is square with a stepped pyramidal top. It was hollow on a circular plan. This similarity has led to some experts dating the statue to 350 BC, but others think that the statue was above a

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...

made to commemorate the nearby naval

Battle of Cnidus The Battle of Cnidus ( gr, Ναυμαχία της Κνίδου) was a military operation conducted in 394 BC by the Achaemenid Empire against the Spartan naval fleet during the Corinthian War. A fleet under the joint command of Pharnabazus and ...

of 394 BC, in which the Athenian general,

Conon Conon ( el, Κόνων) (before 443 BC – c. 389 BC) was an Athenian general at the end of the Peloponnesian War, who led the Athenian naval forces when they were defeated by a Peloponnesian fleet in the crucial Battle of Aegospotami; later he c ...

, commanding a joint Athenian and Persian fleet, was victorious over a Spartan fleet led by Peisander.Knidos
, Planetware.com, retrieved 2 December 2013 A third opinion is that the

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

of the monument is not typical of 250 BC, but is Doric and dates from 175 BC. This variation is summarised in the British Museum's estimate of 200-250 BC as its age.Colossal marble lion from a tomb monument
British Museum Highlights, retrieved 1 December 2013 The rest of the monument is still in Turkey where it has been excavated by the British Museum. It was originally 12 metres square. Excavations at the site, and similar monuments nearby, have failed to find an artefact or inscription that would more definitely date the statue.

Excavation and Removal

The Lion of Knidos was first seen by a British person in 1858 when the archaeologist Richard Popplewell Pullan walked the cliffs near what is now the Turkish town of Datça. Pullan was helping Charles Thomas Newton excavate the ancient Greek city of

three miles away. The statue had crowned an 18-metre high

funerary A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect ...

monument, which had commanding views over the sea and may have once acted as a navigation aid for passing sailors. The monument may have been destroyed in an earthquake, as the statue was found lying some distance from the tomb. The Knidos Lion was transported with some difficulty further down the coast, where it was loaded onto the naval ship HMS ''Supply'' by Robert Murdoch Smith and shipped to London. Smith's role was significant, as he was presented with a large statue that had fallen onto its front face. The

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

core of the monument was still there but the marble facing lay around where it had fallen. Smith was able to replace and move each of the remaining stones which allowed Pullan, who was a trained architect, to sketch what is thought to be a good reproduction of what the whole structure would have looked like. In 2008, the Turkish town of

petitioned the British Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the return of the two statues known as the Lion of Knidos and the Demeter of Knidos.Turkey wants Knidos Lion to be returned
Elginism.com, retrieved 30 November 2013

Description

Excavation and Removal

References

Further reading