Sacred hunt

Why did Assyrian kings like lion hunt so much? According to the Assyrian reliefs, the favorite occupation of the Assyrian kings in peace was a lion hunt...The earliest depictions show the king hunting lions from a chariot using bow and arrows...

The later depictions show the king fighting lions on foot. On some of these depictions the king still used bow and arrows to kill the lion...

But on most of the reliefs, the king was depicted killing a lion with a spear...

Or killing a lion with a sword...

I wonder if this was just a sport or was there some religious reason for this lion hunt? This image depicts the Assyrian king pouring libation in a temple on 4 dead lions...Why? As a thanks to the gods for helping him kill the lions? Or are the lions an offering to the gods?

The climatic year in Mesopotamia is divided into hot, dry half (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool, wet half (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)

You know how lion is the animal calendar marker which represents the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia and Levant...The time of death caused by drought...Because beginning of August, middle of Leo, is the beginning of the main mating season of Eurasian lions...

This is why we find lion depicted with the same heat rays radiating from his back also depicted radiating from the back of the sun god Utu/Shamash...I talked about this in my post "Lion radiating heat"

This is also why in the oldest Mesopotamian depictions, dragons, symbols of the Mesopotamian summer (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and destructive sun's heat, have lion's bodies...I talked about this in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

This is why Nergal, the god of death, the Destructive Sun of the late summer, is depicted as a half man, half lion...I talked about this in my post "Winged superhuman hero"...

And you know how it is "the killing of the lion dragon by the thunder god", which signals the end of the hot dry half of the year...And the beginning of the cool wet part of the year, when rain and abundance return to Mesopotamia and Levant...

Was the Assyrian king slaying the lion a symbolic reenactment of the Sky, Rain, Thunder god, slaying the lion dragon? Did Assyrian kings actually have to kill lions to prove that they are indeed divinely ordained to rule?

Images are from "The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World Volume II" by George Rawlinson. English scholar, historian, and Christian theologian (1812-1902)"

PS: Well apparently I was right. 

The aspect of hunting in the Assyrian/Akkadian had a religious/monarchical importance. This is primarily due to the notion that the Great King, was instructed and obligated to mimic different aspects of the Great Gods; in the case of hunting this meant Ninurta...And Ninurta was the old Rain god...So Kings were enacting Ninurta killing Nergal...

Mario Liverani’s "Assyria: The Imperial Mission" has a chapter dedicated to this aspect of Assyrian kingship...