The Lion, the Shepherd, and the Master of Animals:

As Brent A. Strawn reminds us, metaphor theory has cast significant light on the inter pretation of metaphors and the way they function. 1 This can be briefly summarized in the following way: metaphor is a literary figure that speaks of one thing (A) by means of another (B). The relationship between A and B creates a complex interaction with the transfer of some or all of B’s qualities to A with the consequence that B may be likened to A. This interaction between elements could in theory be extended to different metaphors that have at least one element in common. For example, if the king (A) is associated with the image of the lion (B) in different sources but also to that of the shepherd (C), one could no longer consider these metaphors in a separate way (A/B and A/C) but in their interaction (A/B/C). The shepherd and the lion are images as well as vivid metaphors which have each received much attention. 2 Closely connected to the lion and the shepherd stands the image of the Master of animals which is less documented, 3 possibly because of the fewer textual sources referring to it. It is obvious that these images are those that represent power in the ancient Near East and particularly royal and divine power. This is true also in Greece as documented by Johannes Haubold, 4 who, for example, explores the pastoral theme according to Foucault’s concept of pastoralism and studies how it is reworked in two ancient literary texts, Gilgameš and the Iliad . 5 However, these metaphors have rarely been studied in their interaction. One important and as yet peerless study has,