There are several references to lions, and I was curious what species would have been familiar to people at the time?
Probably the Persian iion/Asiatic lion It’s almost extinct now, only existing in a forest in western India, but until the 19th century, lived throughout India and also in Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria Turkey, and what’s now Israel.
Do they resemble the modern standard picture of a lion, with the males having a big shaggy mane?
It’s these guys, apparently. There are still a few in India, as Captain Amazing said.
They look pretty lion-y to me.
That would be a subspecies rather than a species, Panthera leo persica.
It’s possible the lions of the Middle East could have belonged to another, now extinct, subspecies, the Mesopotamian Lion P. l. mesopotamica. It isn’t certain that this was actually a valid subspecies, however.
The most striking difference from African Lions is that the mane of the male often extends along the side of the body.
They must have interbred with buffaloes somewhere in their history. Or ate a lot of them.