1,700-year-old Roman Mosaic in Miami

 

At the FrostArt Museum at FIU in Miami, Florida, through May 15, 2016, is an opportunity to see an extraordinarily well-preserved 3rd century floor mosaic: Predators and Prey: A Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel. Adding to its interest value is that it holds an unresolved mystery:  Why are there no deities or human beings portrayed, among the menagerie of exotic animals? This is extremely rare for such a large floor mosaic from the time period.

The Lod Mosaic dates to when the town of Lod was a part of the Roman Empire. The amazingly detailed mosaic is thought to have been the floor of a large audience room, in a sumptuous villa owned by a Roman merchant whose trade route crossed between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean. The town of Lod stands on the site of the ancient city of Lydda, which developed in a fertile plain on an important trade route, the Via Maris, from Egypt to Syria and Mesopotamia. As this mosaic attests, it was a center of culture and craft production.

Archaeologists have calculated that more than two million tesserae (mosaic tiles) were used to create the 1,700-year-old masterwork. Three panels from the excavation are included in the exhibition, two rectangular end-panels surrounding a large square central medallion. Featured are indigenous animals coexisting with ferocious wild creatures such as lions and tigers (oh my!), an elephant and a giraffe, and Asian water buffalo, plus marine life, a sea monster and merchant ships.

Learn more about the Lod Mosaic at http://lodmosaic.org/home.html

Images © IsraelAntiquities Authority 

Alexander the Great Meets Hebrew Priest

 An ancient  mosaic believed to depict Alexander the Great meeting a Hebrew high priest has been discovered in a 5th century synagog in Hoqoq,  Israel, unearthed by a team of archaeologists led by Professor Jodi Magness, of the University of North Carolina.

The scene shows a bearded soldier wearing battle dress and a purple cloak leading a bull by the horns, followed by other soldiers, and elephants with shields tied to their sides. He is meeting with a bearded elder who wears a ceremonial white tunic and mantle, accompanied by young men with sheathed swords, also in ceremonial clothes.

According to Professor Magness “Battle elephants were associated with Greek armies beginning with Alexander the Great, so this might be a depiction of a Jewish legend about the meeting between Alexander and the Jewish high priest.” 

An article in the Daily Mail describes other fabulous mosaics discovered previously during this excavation project, which began in 2012 in cooperation with a team from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

This is a unique and important discovery because of the high level of artistic skill it evidences, as well as the fact that the depiction of Alexander the Great is the first non-Biblical figure ever to be discovered in a mosaic in an ancient synagogue.