The fragment has a thin, fine low relief of a lion walking to the r. on a thin, straight ground line. The relief comes from a horizontal band-like part which was the top section of a rather small frame. A bit of projection on the smooth underside indicates that a side piece joined at a right angle. There is just enough preserved to indicate a downward 90° turn in a break at the l.; the piece is therefore an upper l. corner. On the upper r. end there is a trace of a pin hole (?). The carefully drawn profile at the lower edge of the relief (H. 0.014) was probably intended as an architectural frame rather than a base for the lion.

Very similar in style and placement is the painted lioness on a lintel found in the Agora of Athens (Stevens, passim) pointed out to us by H.A. Thompson. Stevens has tried to reconstruct his fragment either as a window or as a lintel of a public shrine with the image of Meter, Mother of the Gods (Cybele). The Sardis fragment might well have come from a small private (domestic) shrine for Cybele.

The Agora fragment has been dated to the later 5th C. B.C. by Rhys Carpenter; a date of around 400 B.C. would fit the Sardis piece. It is very Greek in style; Babylonian and Achaemenid walking lions are much more massive.

Fine-grained white marble.

Head and back lost, split off at sides. Surface battered.