page_title: Lion Throne of Burma
section_title: History and safeguarding of the last Lion Throne
hierarchical_section_title: Lion Throne of Burma / History and safeguarding of the last Lion Throne
caption_attribution_description: English: Watercolour with pen and ink of an interior view of the audience chamber in the Palace at Amarapura looking towards the throne from 'A Series of Views in Burmah taken during Major Phayre’s Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855' by Colesworthy Grant. This album consists of 106 landscapes and portraits of Burmese and Europeans documenting the British embassy to the Burmese King, Mindon Min (r.1853-1878). The mission took place after the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852 and the annexation by the British of the Burmese province of Pegu (Bago). It was despatched by the Governor-General of India Lord Dalhousie on the instructions of the East India Company, to attempt to persuade King Mindon to sign a treaty formally acknowledging the extension of British rule over the province. The mission started out from Rangoon (Yangon) and travelled up the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) to the royal capital at Amarapura, founded in 1782. Grant (1813-1880) was sent as the official artist of the mission. Together with a privately-printed book of notes, his drawings give a vivid account of the journey, and a number were used for illustrations to Henry Yule’s ‘A Narrative of the mission sent by the Governor General of India to the Court of Ava in 1855’ published in 1858. Grant wrote that the audience chamber in this view was 'called ‘Thee-ha-thuna-yàzà-pulleng’, and used only on occasions of importance...the blaze and brilliancy of the colonnaded hall, with its choir and transepts, its elaborately ornate and singular throne, glittering in mosaic and gold...' Today, little remains of the palace buildings at Amarapura.
context_page_description: The Lion Throne is one of the eight historic thrones used by the Burmese monarchs. Seven of them were destroyed by fire during the allied bombing of World War II, but the Lion Throne was saved, because the throne was transported to India in 1885 after the Third Anglo-Burmese War, and later returned.
context_section_description: In total, there were nine thrones of only eight different kinds in the time of the monarchs of Burma. The Lion Throne was used for judicial affairs at the Supreme Court (Hluttaw) of the Myanansankyaw Golden Palace in Yadanabon period (1800s). All of the thrones were constructed during the time of King Bodawpaya (1816) by Shwetaung Nawrahta, the minister of that king, who was in charge of building the palace, including the thrones. There were two Lion Thrones, the original one located at the audience hall and a replica of it, located at the Supreme Court. 
  After King Thibaw was dethroned in 1885, the Lion Throne was taken by the British to India in 1902, where it was displayed at the Indian Museum, Kolkata. After Burma (now Myanmar) regained independence in 1948, it was returned by Lord Mountbatten and housed at the presidential residence on Ahlone Road in Rangoon. On 12 September 1959, the throne was moved to the National Museum for public display, where it remains today.
caption: Painting of the Lion Throne in Amarapura Palace
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "976", "Image ImageLength": "690", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:08:20 03:05:08", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "378", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "0", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "946", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "655"}