A Rug and a Frieze.

A long time ago, when I was buying rugs in Northern Ireland,
I borrowed a very dramatic Qashqei gabbeh (2 metres x 1 metre)
to see how it would look in my house. 
Well, it needed to be in a huge room, probably on a wall –
so I brought it back.

I had thought it was Gilgamesh killing the Lion
(in the Epic of Gilgamesh)
but recently, by accident, I discovered that it is a lively, enhanced copy
of part of an alabaster frieze in the British Museum (and from Nineveh)
showing the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal on a lion-hunt.  

So somehow, someone in Iran had a photograph or postcard
of the British Museum frieze, or this detail, and made their own version...
which ended up in Northern Ireland.