Of syrup and large carnivores

Asiatic Lions, Gir Forest, India

Sitting on many pantry shelves in Britain is a tin of Tate & Lyles Golden Syrup, much employed in the creation of puddings, poured on porridge, and many other uses. Only when you examine the label will you find a rather strange picture – a dead lion surrounded by buzzing insects, and the motto “Out of the strong came forth sweetness”. Using a dead and decaying predator for liquid sugar seems a rather odd advertising gimmick, especially one that has not been changed since 1883, so what is going on? This post is dedicated to the curious history of lions outside Africa, and how they wound up on a tin.

To start with, where do lions come from? Genetic analysis suggests the lineage of all modern big cats split from other felids around 10 or so million years ago, with ancestral lions appearing around 2 million years ago in Africa, at about the same time our own lineage started to look more like present day people rather than bipedal chimpanzees. These ancestral lions dispersed out of Africa across Asia, eventually even reaching the Americas where the American form, Panthera atrox, is frequently found at the famous Rancho La Brea site (which by the way is in the middle of Los Angeles surrounded by traffic). However, as part of the mass extinction at the end of the last glaciation these Northern and American lions died out, leaving only the living species. These were not just confined to Africa though – they lived in open country across Arabia, into the Middle East as far as central India at least. How far east they ranged is not clear as they became part of human stories and mythology practically from the start, but the famous Lion Dances in China and various references in many South Asian cultures suggests they were certainly not unknown.

Mosaic depicting Heracles and the Nemean Lion

By the earliest historical period though lions outside Africa lived in the Middle East, Iran, Anatolia and northern India, and were much persecuted. They also just survived in Europe in the Balkans and possibly further east into Central Asia – lions figure in decorative Scythian art from the earliest historical period, and they were definitely present in the steppes and grasslands of Europe as far west as Hungary well into the Bronze Age. In Greek mythology the first of the twelve labours of Herakles ,in penance for the murder of his wife, was to kill the invincible Nemean lion (he trapped it in a cave and strangled it with his bare hands). Other lions appear in other Greek myths, and it was alleged that lions attacked the camels supplying the troops of the Persian invasion in 480BCE.

In the Middle East however lions survived in greater numbers, and that is how they came to wind up on a syrup tin. The quotation is from the Bible, as part of the story of Samson in the Book of Judges. Incidentally, I cannot help feeling that “Judges” is a really bad translation of the original Hebrew, as it conjurs up pictures of a courtroom and someone passing sentence – “Champions” or even “Superheroes” would seem to give a better approximation of the contents of the book to me. Judges details the semi-legendary figures from the period between Moses and the establishment of the Israelite Monarchy under David. The story starts with Samson going down to Timnah – Philistine Territory – because he had fallen for a girl he had fallen for:

-        When he came to the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion roared at him. The spirit of the Lord rushed on him, and he tore the lion apart barehanded as one might tear apart a kid. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson. After a while he returned to marry her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion, and there was a swarm of bees in the body of the kion, and honey. He scraped it out into his hands, and went on, easting as he went.”

Samson and the Lion

The wedding feast does not go well. Samson makes a bet with the young men of his wife’s relatives:

-        Samson said to them” Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can explain it to me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments. But if you cannot explain it to me, then you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments. So they said to him “Ask your riddle, let us hear it.” He said to them “Out of the eater came something to east, out of the strong came something sweet”.

Unable to guess the riddle, they finally persuade Samsons new wife to wheedle the secret out of him, and that is when things go really wrong:

-        The men of the town said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” And he said to them “If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle”. Then the spirit of the Lord rushed on him, and he went down to Ashkelon. He killed thirty men of the town, took their spoil, and gave the festal garments to those who had explained the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his fathers’ house. And Samsons wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.

A pretty horrible story, as I am sure you agree, but it does show that in this early period at least lions were familiar enough to figure in popular stories.

Later, the boy David volunteers to Saul to fight Goliath, explaining why he is not afraid:

-        “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and whenever a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb from the flock, I went down after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb from its mouth, and if it turned against me I would catch it by the jaw, strike it down and kill it. Your servant has killed both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God” (I should point out that at this point the said armies are holed up in the hills, scared to come to open battle against a vastly better equipped Philistine army.)

To go back to the beginning of this post, in 1881 an enterprising sugar refiner named Abram Lyle found he could sell the syrup produced as part of his cane sugar refining process to grocers all over London, and invented the label that the tins carry to this day. The business later merged with another sugar refiner, Henry Tate & Sons (The Tate Gallery in London was founded with a donation from the family). In 2010 the whole business was sold to American Sugar Refining, Inc, leaving the famous tins as simply a brand label.