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The Lion Lady - Die Lowenfrau
Lowenfrau, Lowenmensch, Löwenmensch, the Lion Lady Venus - carved from mammoth ivory, it is 28 cm high and 6 cm in diameter. It was found in the cave of Hohlenstein-Stadel in the Valley of Lone, Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany), in 1931, dated as Aurignacian, in a 32 000 year old level. Although this is known in some places as the lion lady, it is by no means certain that it is female. The arms bear striations carved into the ivory. Years after the initial discovery the museum officials were presented with an ivory lion muzzle found in the cave. It was a perfect fit. Today it is pieced together from more than 200 tiny pieces. This 'venus' may be an attempt to capture the power of the lion.
The Löwenmensch from Hohlenstein-Stadel. Height 28 cm, about 6 cm diameter. Made of mammoth ivory. Found in the cave of Hohlenstein-Stadel in the Valley of Lone, Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany), in 1931. Dated as Aurignacian, in a 32 000 year old level.
Although this is known in some places as the lion lady, it is by no means certain that it is female. It is known as both Die Lowenfrau and Der Lowenmensch.
The arms bear striations carved into the ivory. Years after the initial discovery the museum officials were presented with an ivory lion muzzle found in the cave. It was a perfect fit. Today it is pieced together from more than 200 tiny pieces. This 'venus' may be an attempt to capture the power of the lion.
Dimensions: height 281 mm, width 63 mm, thickness 59 mm.
This is the best quality photo I have been able to locate so far.
Photo: http://www.loewenmensch.de/lion_man.html
Its pieces were found in 1939 in a cave named Stadel-Höhle im Hohlenstein (Stadel cave in Hohlenstein Mountain) in the Lonetal (Lone valley) in the Swabian Alps, Germany. Due to the beginning of the Second World War, it was forgotten and only rediscovered thirty years later. The first reconstruction revealed a humanoid figurine without head. Between 1997 and 1998 additional pieces of the sculpture were discovered and the head was reassembled and restored.
The sculpture is 296 mm high, 56 mm wide and 59 mm thick. It was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. There are seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges on the left arm.
Originally, the figure was classified as male by Joachim Hahn. From examination of some additional parts of the sculpture found later, Elisabeth Schmid decided that the figure was a woman with the head of a "Höhlenlöwin" (female Cave Lion).[4] Both interpretations lack scientific evidence.[4] European cave lions, male and female, lacked the distinctive manes of the African male lion, and so its absence here cannot lead to an interpretation as a 'lioness'.
Recently the ancient figurine has more often been called a lion headed figurine, rather than a 'lion man'. The name currently used in German, Löwenmensch—meaning 'lion-human' — similarly, is neutral.
Interpretation is very difficult. The sculpture shares certain similarities with French cave wall paintings, which also show hybrid creatures. The French paintings, however, are several thousand years younger than the German sculpture.
After this artifact was identified, a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture was found, along with other animal figures and several flutes, in another cave in the same region of Germany.This leads to the possibility that the lion-figure played an important role in the mythology of humans of the early Upper Paleolithic. The sculpture can be seen in the Ulmer Museum in Ulm, Germany.
Photo and text adapted from: http://www.historyofinformation.com/index.php?category=Archaeology and Wikipedia.
The original lion lady/man is now in the Ulm Museum (City Museum of Ulm), but many museums all over the world own a copy.
Photo: Gaura, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain.
Hohle Fels miniature lion man, only 26 mm (one inch) tall, of mammoth ivory. It obviously has strong affinities with the Löwenmensch of the Stadel-Höhle, and comes from a nearby site.
It was discovered during an excavation in 2001 in the Hohle Fels cave near Schelklingen - a figure that exhibits both human and animal characteristics. Unfortunately, only half of it is preserved. The upright posture and the distinctly sloping shoulders suggest a human being.
On the head, a finely shaped ear can be recognised. The arm is short and decorated with spots and a vertical scratch. These are apparent feline attributes.
Generally, this statuette is referred to as the 'little brother' of the Lion-Man from Hohlenstein-Stadel - yet another hybrid statuette. Due to the condition of its preservation it cannot be defined whether this is a female or a male.
The statuette is between 31 000 and 33 000 years old.
Height:
25.5 mm
The original carving is in the Urgeschichtliches Museum, Blaubeuren.
Photo: (left) http://gchess.bizland.com/Bird%20research%20II.htm, (centre) http://www.ice-age-art.de/anfaenge_der_kunst/fels/mensch.php, (right) Ralph Frenken
Text: Adapted from http://www.ice-age-art.de/anfaenge_der_kunst/fels/mensch.php
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Another version of the Lion Lady/Man. Click on the image for a larger version. Colour photo from: National Geographic October 1988, photo by Alexander Marshack Drawing from: Agenda de la Préhistoire 2002 - 2003, a superb diary with excellent illustrations sent to me by Anya. My thanks as always.
Dans l'abri du Höhlenstein-Stadel, dans le Jura souabe (Allemagne), a été découverte cette statuette en ivoire d'un hornme à tête de lion, dans une couche aurignacienne, c'est-à-dire plus on moins contemporaine de la grotte Chauvet. |
On a 1500 km bicycle ride down the Danube from Donaueschingen to Budapest, my wife and I called in to the beautiful old city of Ulm, set on a ridge behind a wall beside the river.
I felt like some coffee and cake, preferably with ice cream, and we pushed our bicycles through the old gate, and up the steep cobbled street to the city square, with the steeples of the Ulm Cathedral dominating the skyline.
It is in the museum here that the Löwenmensch resides, although I had forgotten that at the time.
Photo: Don Hitchcock 2008
As we entered the main town square, I laughed out loud - there was a sea of Löwenmenschen in the square, painted in colours like that of a technicolor dream - or nightmare!
The surprise of seeing in multiple, large versions something I had thought of as a little known artefact of the Ice Age had me grinning and shaking my head in disbelief as I looked over them from the cafe window (on the right in this photo) as I had my coffee and cake (no ice cream was available!).
It made my day, though every day of that trip was enjoyable and memorable.
Photo: Don Hitchcock 2008
The force of the installation lay in the fact that there were so many, so similar yet so different, each expressing the imagination of the particular artist.
Photo: Don Hitchcock 2008
These two had obviously been carefully chosen to be suitable for the entrance to an upmarket restaurant.
Photo: Don Hitchcock 2008
Each of the fibreglass or plastic figures had been decorated by a different artist, and there was an identifying tag on each of them, which said in part:
Homage to the Lion Man
Art installation
On the occasion of the Festival of Ulm, Baden-Württemburg 2008
under the auspices of the Lord Mayor of the city of Ulm.
Photo: Don Hitchcock 2008
Ice age Art - A new find completes one more part of the jigsaw puzzle of the Löwenmensch
2011.04.14
For the archaeologists of the National Monument Office, it's like a stroke of luck in the lottery: In excavations in the Stadelhöhle am Hohenstein, a rocky cliff in the Lonetal valley above Asselfingen, they have found in hundreds of fragments of mammoth ivory more matching pieces of the famous lion-man, which they have presented to the public on Tuesday. The 35 000 - 40 000 year-old lion-man, a nearly 30-centimetre statutette with a lion's head and a human torso was carved during the last glacial period of Stone Age people from a mammoth tusk and is therefore regarded as the one of the oldest examples of figurative art of mankind.
In August 1939, Würzburg anatomist Robert Wetzel in his excavations in the Stadelhöhle, discovered the mysterious hybrid of human and cave lion, but did not recognise its true significance. The war abruptly interrupted the excavations, and the findings were sent to Tübingen and from there back to the Ulm Museum. Only in 1988 was the Ice Age figurine been reconstructed from hundreds of fragments in Ulmer Museum. The lion man was missing, however, large parts of the right side and back. With the new finds, the 30 centimetre figure made of mammoth ivory is likely to be reconstructed completely.
Kurt Wehrberger, Head of the Department of Antiquities at the Museum in Ulm (left) with the Löwenmensch and excavation director Claus-Joachim Kind at the entrance of the cave at the Stadelhöhle am Hohlenstein cave - where the figure was carved 35 000 years ago.
Photo: Martina Dach
Source: http://www.schwaebische.de/region/biberach-ulm/ulm/stadtnachrichten-ulm_artikel,-Eiszeitkunst-Funde-machen-Loewenmensch-komplett-_arid,5060899.html
Höhle "Stadel" am Hohlenstein am Südhang des Lonetals.
Date: 2010.08.15
Photo: Wikiman85
Permission: public domain
Here we can see how the newly found pieces fit into place.
Photo: http://www.schwaebische.de/region/biberach-ulm/ulm/stadtnachrichten-ulm_artikel,-Eiszeitkunst-Funde-machen-Loewenmensch-komplett-_arid,5060899.html
Another view of how the pieces of the back fit together.
Photo: Kurt Wehrberger, head of the Department of Antiquities at the Museum in Ulm
Source: http://www.archaeoforum.de/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4149
In this computer reconstruction, the new pieces of the puzzle are shown in pink.
Photo: Kurt Wehrberger, Head of the Department of Antiquities at the Museum in Ulm
Source: http://www.archaeoforum.de/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4149
Identification of Mammoth, Mastodon and Elephant Ivory
Text below: http://www.fossil-treasures-of-florida.com/FossilTreasuresofFloridaNewsletter-newsletter0007.htmland http://2ndlook.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/lowenmensch-puzzle-am-i-missing-something/
The Löwenmensch figurine is made of ivory – which is usually used in context of elephant-tusks. In this case it has been proposed that this was made from mammoth or a mastodon tusk – the ancestors of modern elephants. The Ulm Museum where this figure is housed says this was carved by ‘stone tools out of mammoth ivory’.
It is unclear on what basis the ivory type of the Löwenmensch was decided. Was it fossil ivory, of the mammoth type, or the modern African or Asian elephant tusk. The US Customs Department uses the Schreger Pattern to decide between elephant or mammoth ivory.
(left) Schreger lines for mammoth ivory.
(right) Schreger lines in elephant ivory.
Photo : http://www.lab.fws.gov/ivory_natural.php
Permission: These images are a work of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.
If the angle of the cross-hatch pattern is less than 90 degrees, the ivory is fossil mammoth (mammoth forms angles of 87 degrees on average). If the cross-hatch angle is more than 90 degrees, the ivory could be modern elephant (modern elephant ivory forms angles greater than 115 degrees.) On the other hand, Mastodons cross-hatch angle is 125 degrees on average.
Text: http://www.fossil-treasures-of-florida.com/FossilTreasuresofFloridaNewsletter-newsletter0007.html
and http://2ndlook.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/lowenmensch-puzzle-am-i-missing-something/