The motif of a man holding two lions without attacking them with any weapons is to be found again and again, from the beginning to the end of Ancient Oriental Art, that is, from 4th millennium B.C. stamp seals and the knife from Djebel el-Arak to the last cylinder seals in Achaemenian style. To call the man “Gilgamesh” or “Daniel”, however, is only to provide “nick-names” for him, since there is no serious contemporary written evidence to identify him.

It is only in the realm of Christian Art, as, for example, on a magnificent Nestorian silver plate in the Hermitage Museum, recently published by B. Marshak, that we can confidently describe the hero as Daniel in the lions' den. This later development of the motif has been excellently described in two articles by W. Deonna. Even, however, in the case of the famous suaire de St. Victor at Sens, we can only be sure that the figure was interpreted as that of Daniel in the secondary, European usage of the suaire, that is to say when it was given, around A.D. 760, to the Archbishop of Sens or, earlier, came to the monastery of St. Maurice d'Agaune. It is, however, most probable that, when it was originally manufactured, in southern Iraq or Khuzistan sometime before that date, Daniel was indeed the figure represented, since the Muslim conquerors of Susa also believed that he was the holy man who had lived and been buried in that city. Ibn Hauqal, for instance, tells us that general Abu Musa, the conqueror of Susa, suppressed there a local cult procession bearing Daniel's body while praying for rain, but that Abu Musa buried the coffin again “in the midst of the river”.