m. w. merrony--the reconciliation of paganism and christianity in

LA 48 (1998) 441-482; Pls. 21-30

THE RECONCILIATION OF PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITYIN THE EARLY BYZANTINE MOSAIC PAVEMENTS

OF ARABIA AND PALESTINE*

M. W. Merrony

A number of approaches have characterized the study of mosaics in theeastern provinces of the Roman and Byzantine empire. The cataloguing ofthe mosaics of Israel up to 1935 by M. Avi-Yonah,1 was continued and ex-tended up to 1975 by R. Ovadiah and A. Ovadiah.2 In both cases, the codi-fication and classification of iconography represented a somewhat de-constructive approach since these did not take adequate account of broaderissues, such as the diffusion of style or symbolism.

The approach adopted by L. Budde, on the other hand, might be re-garded as “aesthetic.”3 The stylistic examination of acanthus decoration inthe mosaics of Misis formed the basis for an interpretation that culminatedin their attribution to a workshop in Antioch.4 This methodology was su-perseded by that of C. Dauphin, who codified several stylistic traits on in-habited scroll pavements and postulated the diffusion of mosaic art from anumber of main centres in the eastern provinces.5

D. Levi, too, examined the development and diffusion of style in thevilla pavements of Antioch but also explored the possible symbolic con-

*Thanks are due to Dr. Julian Raby of the Oriental Institute, Oxford, and to ProfessorClaudine Dauphin of the CNRS, Paris, for their valuable time, academic advice and encour-agement during the preparation of this paper. We are also grateful to Father MichelePiccirillo, OFM, for his kind permission to reproduce several of the plates which appear inthe present article.

1. M. Avi-Yonah, “Mosaic Pavements in Palestine”, QDAP 2 (1932) 136-181; 3 (1933) 26-72; 4 (1934) 187-193; 5 (1935) 11-30.

2. A. Ovadiah - R. Ovadiah, Mosaic Pavements in Israel, Rome 1987.

3. L. Budde, Antike Mosaiken in Kilikien. I: Frühchristliche Mosaiken in Misis-Mopsuhestia(Beiträge zur kunst des Christlichens Ostens, Band 5), Recklinghausen 1969.

4. A critique of this interpretative methodology is provided by C. Dauphin, “A New Methodof Studying Early Byzantine Mosaic Pavements (Coding and Computed Cluster Analysis)with Special Reference to the Levant”, Levant 8 (1976) 113-149, esp. 113.

5. For an examination of artistic diffusion in the eastern provinces, Dauphin, “A NewMethod”, 113-145.

M. W. MERRONY442

tent of their iconography.6 He suggested, for example, that scenes exhibit-ing a mythological theme, such as the hunting scene, tended to lose theirmythological aspect in the course of the Roman period and gained in sym-bolic value by becoming genre hunting scenes. Symbolism also formed aprincipal element in the interpretative method applied by S. Saller and B.Bagatti to the iconography of Early Byzantine ecclesiastical pavements inArabia.7 Various categories of pavement iconography were viewed es-sentially as evoking a religious significance appropriate to the ecclesiasticalsphere. A more recent exegesis has been applied to Early Byzantine mosa-ics by H. Maguire.8 He suggested that mosaic art often represented either aliteral or allegorical Christian view of the terrestrial world. A more descrip-tive approach was taken by M. Piccirillo, who has comprehensively exam-ined the mosaics of Jordan in the Early Byzantine period and has providedan overview of their iconography.9

The methodology applied in the present article represents a somewhatdifferent one to the various approaches outlined above. It is based on oneof several trends which emerged from the vast corpus of mosaic pavementsfrom the 4th to 8th century period in the Provinces of Arabia and Pales-tine.10 A significant trend, at the core of our work, appears to be the di-chotomy between villae on the one hand, which frequently exhibitedmythological iconography, and ecclesiastical buildings on the other, whichoften contained inhabited vine rinceau pavements. This novel observationhas at least two implications which demand to be investigated. Firstly, itmay be conjectured whether this apparent secular/religious split in iconog-raphy has a separate secular and religious meaning. Secondly, the presencein the Christian period of mythological scenes, which often contain pagansubject matter, requires an explanation.

A synthetic multidisciplinary approach to a vast and constantly expand-ing body of material is attempted here, with the aim of providing a fresh

6. A comprehensive study of stylistic development and the significance of iconography inthe mosaic pavements of Antioch was presented by D. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I-II, Princeton - London - The Hague 1947.

7. The possible religious symbolism of Early Byzantine church iconography has been dis-cussed in full by S.J. Saller - B. Bagatti, The Town of Nebo and Other Ancient ChristianMonuments, Jerusalem 1949, ch. 3, pp. 86-111.

8. H. Maguire, Earth and Ocean. The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art, London1987.

9. M. Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, Amman 1993.

10. Several other trends which may be regarded as geographical and economic, are beyondthe scope of this paper.

RECONCILIATION OF PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 443

11. For an overview of the geographical area covered in this paper, Y. Tsafrir - L. Di Segni - J.Green, Tabula Imperii Romani Iudea Palaestina: Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic, Roman andByzantine Periods, Maps and Gazeteer, Jerusalem 1994, fig. 1.

12. Ovadiah - Ovadiah, Mosaic Pavements, are a case in point. The pavements are reviewedfrom a contemporary geographical perspective and no account is taken of the fact that thecatalogued pavements of the Early Byzantine period were scattered across the Provinces ofPhoenicia, Palaestina Prima, Secunda, and Tertia.

13. A brief discussion of this mosaic is provided by C.H. Kraeling, Gerasa: City of theDecapolis, New Haven 1938, 351, pl. lxxxivb.

perspective by examining the pavements of an entire region, province byprovince,11 whereas at present pavements are largely studied exclusivelywithin the confines of modern countries (for instance Israel, Jordan orSyria), where they were excavated.12 The aim of this paper is to addressthe significance of secular and religious iconography in the Early Byzan-tine period. It should be stressed that we do not aim to attempt a definitiveiconographic interpretation. Rather the material thus approached raises sev-eral fundamental questions of interpretation.

The religious and secular context: an apparent dichotomy

A principal trend has emerged from our study and has consequentlyformed our interpretative framework. A conspicuous feature is an icono-graphic dichotomy between ecclesiastical buildings, churches and syna-gogues, on the one hand, and villae on the other. In short, the inhabitedvine scroll pavement, an ubiquitous feature particularly of 6th centurychurches (in Arabia and Palestine) and synagogues (in Palestine), wouldseem to be absent from the villa context. One possible exception tothis can be found at Gerasa in the House on Camp Hill, which containsa fragmentary pavement. The preserved field is decorated by an inhab-ited vine rinceau which issues from an amphora. It has been suggestedby C. Kraeling that this pavement belonged to a private house eventhough he admits that when the pavement was originally excavated, “noattempt was made to ascertain the extent of the mosaic or to determinethe nature of the structure to which it belonged.”13 It should be pointedout that when observed carefully, the areas encompassed by severalscrolls exhibit reworking, which may suggest iconoclastic activity. Thiscould lend support to the idea that this mosaic belonged to a religiousbuilding.

M. W. MERRONY444

14. On the rinceau in the Tiberias baths, Ovadiah - Ovadiah, Mosaic Pavements, 140.Room ‘M’ at a villa in Jenah, dated to the first half of the 6th century, contains an inhab-ited vine rinceau in its field: M.H. Chéhab, “Mosaïques du Liban”, Bulletin du Musée deBeyrouth 14 (1959) 9-189, esp. 53-79, pl. xxix. One such example from Antioch can befound at the House of the Bird Rinceau (upper level), the border of which contains aninhabited vine rinceau dated to the mid-6th century (Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I,366; II, pl. xcl).

15. M. Piccirillo, “The Burnt Palace of Madaba”, ADAJ 30 (1986) 333-39, fig. 2; Id., TheMosaics of Jordan, 78-79, figs 49-54.

16. A detailed description of the villa and its mosaic, with illustrations, is presented by E.Netzer - Z. Weiss, Zippori, Jerusalem 1994, 30-39.

One certain example of an inhabited vine rinceau decorating a secu-lar context in Palestine is in hall 69 of the 6th century baths at Tiberias,and there are certainly examples of the vine rinceau appearing in the villacontext in the provinces of Phoenicia (at Jenah) and Syria (at Antioch)during the 6th century.14 However, it is perhaps worth stressing that theproportion of excavated villae in Arabia and Palestine is low comparedto the number of religious buildings, particularly churches, during thatperiod. Conversely, at Antioch, where the vine rinceau is present in thevilla context, the proportion of villae is higher. It may well be that fu-ture excavations will alter the current picture in Arabia and Palestine.Nevertheless, the fact remains that not one proven instance of the inhab-ited vine rinceau in the villa context exists in the Provinces of Arabiaand Palestine.

This raises the possibility that the inhabited vine rinceau pavementmight be viewed as essentially religious in significance. Nevertheless, weshould not lose sight of the fact that similar kinds of scenes characterizeboth religious and secular contexts. For example, hunting and pastoralscenes, a popular feature of the inhabited vine rinceau pavement, also oc-cur in villa mosaics. At Madaba, for instance, the field of the Burnt Pal-ace contains hunting and pastoral scenes enclosed within an acanthusrinceau.15 A hunting scene, dated to the 5th century, also characterizes partof the field in the House of the Nile Festival at Sepphoris in Palestine.16

Thus caution should be exercised in interpreting a religious/secular spliton the presence or absence of the vine rinceau alone. It is therefore desir-able to seek a particular characteristic trait of iconography which is in-cluded in, or excluded from, one particular sector. There are two suchexamples. The first is the Classical mythological scene, which was typi-cal of the villa in the period studied but did not occur in a Christian orJewish religious context. Examples in Palestine include the villa at Cheikh


17. J. Clédat, “Fouilles à Cheikh Zouède (janvier-février 1913)”, Annales du Service desAntiquités de l’Egypte 15 (1915) 15-48, figs 1-2, pls ii-v.

18. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I, 73, n. 32.

19. L.Y. Rahmani, “The Erez Mosaic Pavement”, IEJ 25 (1975) 21-24, pls 3-4.

20. M. Piccirillo, “La chiesa della Vergine a Madaba”, LA, 373-402, pl. iv; Id., The Mosa-ics of Jordan, 51-63, 66-67, pls 3-18, 24-31.

21. M. Piccirillo, Chiese e mosaici di Madaba, Jerusalem - Milan 1989, 134-136; Id., TheMosaics of Jordan, 76, figs 33, 34, 40, 44 and 45.

22. Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo, ch. II, pp. 41-45, figs 5 and 8; ch. IV, pp. 69-73, 87and 92, pls 22-30; Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 178, fig. 244.

23. G.M. Fitzgerald, A Sixth Century Monastery at Beth-Shean (Scythopolis), Philadelphia1939, pl. xvi.

Zuweid,17 which incorporates a depiction of Hippolytus and Phaedra anda Dionysiac procession of the post-Constantinian period.18 A Dionysiacprocession is also found in the villa excavated at Erez.19 Similarly inArabia, at Madaba, the 6th century Hippolytus Hall (Fig. 1)20 depicted themyth of Hippolytus and Phaedra while, also at Madaba, the Mosaic ofAchilles portrayed the remnants of a Dionysiac procession (ca. 500-550).Another partly preserved example of a Dionysiac procession is depictedat Madaba on the Bacchic Procession pavement (Fig. 2).21

The second kind of exclusive iconography would seem to be vintagescenes. A number of examples of vintaging scenes are present in the inhab-ited scroll pavements of 6th century Arabia and Palestine such as in theChurch of St George at Mount Nebo in Arabia (Fig. 3),22 and the Monas-tery of Lady Mary at Beth Shean in Palestine.23 In contrast, vintage sceneswould seem to be absent from the villa context.

It is thus possible to discern a basic divide between villae on the onehand, with their scenes from Classical mythology, and, on the other reli-gious buildings (churches and synagogues) whose mosaic pavements fre-quently depicted a combination of rural scenes, notably the vine harvest,enclosed within a compositional vine rinceau framework.

The Origin and Significance of Rural and Mythological Themes in theRoman Period

In order to gain an insight into the significance of secular and religiousiconographic themes in the Early Byzantine period it is necessary to at-tempt at addressing their meaning in the Roman period. The three mainscenes concerning us here in the religious sphere in the Early Byzantine

M. W. MERRONY446

24. A detailed examination of the development of the acanthus and vine rinceau in a vari-ety of artistic media is provided by Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I, 489-517.

25. The development of the vine and acanthus rinceau in architectural sculpture and mosaicart has been thoroughly examined by C. Dauphin “The Development of the ‘InhabitedScroll’ in Architectural Sculpture and Mosaic Art from Late Imperial Times to the SeventhCentury AD”, Levant 19 (1987) 183-212.

26. Dauphin, “Development”, 190, suggests that this is exemplified in the late 1st centuryZliten inhabited acanthus field scrolls and by the frigidarium pavement of the baths at Birel-Caid, near Sousse. See S. Aurigemma, I Mosaici di Zliten, Rome 1926, 205-32, figs 130-145; L. Foucher, “Thermes romains des environs d’Hadrumète”, Notes et Documents 1(1958) 5-14; “Découvertes archéologiques à Thysdrus en 1960”, Notes et Documents 4(1960) 106-107, pls lva-c, lvi, lviiib.

period are those which depict the rural activities of arable, hunting andpastoral practice, while in the secular context it is the mythological scene.Since it has been established that religious themes are frequently enmeshedwithin a compositional vine rinceau framework, we might also view therinceau as having some kind of inextricable link with its inherent iconog-raphy. It might thus also prove instructive to examine the development ofthe rinceau in the artistic media from the Roman period in relation to cor-ollary changes in style and floor composition.

The development of the inhabited acanthus and vine scroll

The use of the rinceau in artistic media can be traced back to the Hellenisticperiod. Levi has demonstrated that the rinceau derives from the Hellenisticgarland with fruit, grapes and vine leaves entwined with a ribbon associatedwith theatrical masks usually set in the corners. Examples of this kind in ar-chitectural sculpture may be found in the theatre at Pergamon (2nd centuryBC) and subsequently in Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagi.24 Dauphin pointsout that the garland was the most frequently used motif in mosaic art foremblema frames on floors and walls from the first decade of the 1st centuryBC to the end of the 3rd century AD.25 Between the late 3rd and early 6thcenturies, the garland was superseded by the scroll in sculpted friezes and onmosaic panels and borders. It is possible to plot a major compositional changein the nature of inhabited scroll fields of mosaic pavements in North Africaand the East respectively in the period between the 1st and 3rd, and the 4th tothe 7th centuries. This is essentially characterized by a transition from a looseexuberance (where, for example, animals are separated from each other byvine stems and tree branches spread haphazardly across the surface)26 to an


27. As manifest in a variety of 5th and 6th-century examples of inhabited scroll pavementsin the Levant.

28. I. Lavin, “Antioch Hunting Mosaics and Their Sources”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17(1963) 179-287, esp. 187.

29. A detailed treatment of the Alexander Mosaic, with numerous illustrations, is presentedby A. Cohen, The Alexander Mosaic. Stories of Victories and Defeat, Cambridge 1997.

30. G. Gullini, I Mosaici di Palestrina, Rome 1956; H.P. L’Orange - P.J. Nordhagen, Mo-saics, London 1966, pl. 5; Cohen, The Alexander Mosaic, figs 51-59.

31. The development of mosaic composition throughout the Roman period has been exam-ined by K.M.D. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa: Studies in Iconographyand Patronage, Oxford 1978, esp. 1-11.

increasing organisation of the pavement; and in the formalization of the pat-terns created by the scrolls (where the rinceau itself became highlygeometricized, tightly framing its iconographic subject matter).27

The development of style and floor composition

The apparent compositional shift from naturalism to schematization inthe rinceau is paralleled by a second discernible stylistic change. In theHellenistic period, the composition of floor mosaics emphasized realism.This was facilitated by the development of emblemata, panels composedof stone and glass fragments, often imitating the style of actual paint-ings, set into an ornamental framework designed to enhance them. Thistype of floor arrangement has been aptly described by I. Lavin as beingtreated much like a wall on which a picture is hung - a neutral groundcut through by an illusionistic hole.28 Two examples of the emblema typepar excellence are the Alexander mosaic from Pompeii29 and the Nilemosaic from Palestrina.30 Both pavements successfully created a senseof three-dimensional realism which was achieved in large measure bythe successful rendering of recession, depth and perspective - traits whichare difficult to produce on the flat medium of a floor surface and re-quire considerable expenditure of artistic skill, time and economic re-sources.

Mosaics thus tended towards abstractness and stylisation. As a conse-quence, in many parts of the empire the subsequent history of mosaics inthe Roman period may be seen as a variety of attempts to break away fromthe limitations inherent in the traditional concept.31 This was traced byLavin in examining the formal changes in North African hunting pavements

M. W. MERRONY448

32. A detailed study of the development of floor composition in North African mosaic pave-ments is provided by Lavin, “Antioch Hunting Mosaics”, esp. 204-244.

33. A thorough examination of the development of composition, particularly of Levantinepavements is presented by C. Dauphin, “Carpets of Stone: the Graeco-Roman Legacy inthe Levant”, Classics Ireland 4 (1997) 1-33.

during the 3rd and 4th centuries.32 One of Lavin’s main observations wasthat North African mosaicists repeatedly approached the floor area as aconsistent unit, and that this conception manifested itself in a variety ofcompositional types that served to retain the integrity of the floor’s surfacewhile covering more or less uniformly the entire area of the pavement.Essentially, the first indications of a departure from the traditional conceptsin the Near East was apparent at Antioch in the 4th century. Pavementsbecame characterized by large uniform patterns which spread out over thewhole surface and developed into “repeat” patterns and “trellises” or griddesigns which were most reminiscent of textiles and evidently popular inthe provinces of Syria and Palestine from the 5th century onwards.33 Thisbasic transition from three-dimensional realism to two-dimensional ab-stractness in mosaic art might well provide a reasonable explanation for thepopularity of the acanthus and vine rinceau in the 5th, and particularly the6th, centuries. Both motifs lent themselves particularly well to formingscrolls on the floor area in a geometricized manner, while at the same timeproviding an appropriate two-dimensional artistic solution.

The iconography of inhabited scroll pavements

As suggested above, arable, hunting and pastoral scenes were repetitive andcharacteristic features of 5th and 6th century pavements.

The arable scene

The arable scene depicted the vine harvest and its associated activities suchas the transportation of grapes from the vineyard and their subsequentpressing and treading, often to the accompaniment of a flute player. A sec-ond kind of scene involved the presentation of what appears to be a fruitharvest to a central personification. A third and rarer type sometimes por-trayed a man engaged in the activity of pomegranate harvesting (Fig. 4).


34. L. Foucher, “Découvertes archéologiques à Thysdrus en 1960”, Notes et Documents 4(1961) 27-29, pls xi-xii; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 117, n. 28, 180-1;pls 106, 180; M. Blanchard-Lemée - M. Ennaïfer - H. Slim - M. Slim, Floor Mosaics fromTunisia, London 1996, 104-105; figs 69 and 70.

35. E. Albertini, Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Travaux, 1921, lxxx-lxxxii, pl. I;Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 115, pl. 105.

36. J. Lassus, “L’Archéologie algérienne”, Libyca 7 (1959) 257-269, figs 28-36; Dunbabin,The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 116, pls D, 107-8.

37. W. Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome from the third to the fourteenth centuries, London1967, pl. 38.

38. M. Piccirillo - E. Alliata, Umm al-Rasas Mayfa’ah. I: Gli scavi del complesso di SantoStefano, Jerusalem 1994, large plan.

Frequently these scenes were linked with personifications of the monthsand/or personifications of the Four Seasons. The kind of arable scene de-picted in the Levantine religious pavements had its antecedents earlier inthe Roman period, notably in North African villa mosaics. A pavementfrom the House of Silenus at El-Djem (ca. 260-280), for example, depictsputti harvesting grapes amid the branches of the vine, performing seem-ingly acrobatic feats in order to reach the large bunches of grapes.34 Thereare also a number of vintaging scenes from Cherchel. For example, a frag-mentary pavement from the Cherchel Museum (ca. 200-220) depicts mentreading grapes in a wine-press while the wine runs through spouts into twolarge dolia.35 In another example (ca. 375-425), figures are also portrayedtreading grapes in a winepress on one side of the pavement while the juiceruns out through a spout into a dolium beneath. Along two of the other sidesmen cut grapes and carry them in large baskets; one, who is stirring thejuice in a large dolium, is approached by another carrying a hare and apruning knife. On the remaining side are two scenes, one of which showsan ox-cart carrying off the grapes in a vat.36 A similar kind of scene hadbeen depicted at an earlier date on the vault of the church of Sta Costanzain Rome (325-350).37

The last three examples in particular prefigure the later Levantine har-vesting scenes. One is reminded, for instance, of a scene from a pavementin the 8th century Church of St Stephen at Umm al-Rasas in Arabia, whichshows men picking and treading grapes, the juice of which flows into adolium.38 In the Roman period, the vintaging scene was frequently directlyassociated in the same pavement with some element of the Dionysiac sceneand thus could be regarded as symbolical of one of the cult’s principal char-acteristics: wine and drunkeness. These associations will be examined insome detail below.

M. W. MERRONY450

Personifications of the Earth, the Four Seasons and the Laboursof the Months

Personifications of the Earth, Gê, appear frequently in mosaics of Arabiaand Palestine, for example in the Upper Chapel of the Priest John (Fig. 5)39

and the Church of St George (Fig. 3) at Khirbet el-Mukhayyat and the villaat Beit Guvrin. In all cases, the figure is labelled by an inscription in Greek“Earth”, and is associated with the Seasons. In each example Earth is de-picted as a bust of a woman carrying fruits in the end of her cloak.40 Thesame stance is taken by the personification of the month of March on themosaic from Hall A in the Monastery of Lady Mary at Beth Shean,41 andby the full-length figures of the Four Seasons in the mosaic from Room 1of the 4th century Constantinian Villa at Antioch.42 On this occasion eachSeason holds a different element of floral produce: Spring - flowers, Sum-mer - wheat, Autumn - fruits, and Winter - olives.

The various attitudes of the different allegories and the produce whichthey purvey are part of a long tradition in the Classical period. Levi hassuggested, for example, that the personifications of the Four Seasons havetheir antecedents earlier than the 4th century BC in the Horai, a group offemale deities each of whom presided over a different Season although theywere all shown in a similar attitude.43 M. Hanfmann has noted that, “in thearchaic and Classical art of Greece, the seasons are usually shown in fullfigures and participate in some mythological scene; in Roman art they ap-pear as isolated figures and in Late Roman art they appear as isolatedbusts.”44 In the Roman period, scenes of the Four Seasons were an ubiqui-tous feature of the villa context.45 It has been suggested that the inclusion

39. For detailed treatments of this floor, Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo, ch. 2, p. 34,fig. 4; ch. 3, esp. pp. 49-55, pls 8-13; M. Piccirillo, “La cappella del Prete Giovanni diKhirbet el-Mukhayyat (villagio di Nebo)”, LA 38 (1988) 297-312, esp. 300, pl. 1; Id., TheMosaics of Jordan, 166-175, figs 216-175.

40. Illustrated in L.H. Vincent, “Une Villa gréco-romaine à Beit Jibrin, Chronique”, RB 31(1922) 259-281, pls viii-x.

41. Fitzgerald, The Sixth Century Monastery, frontispiece.

42. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, II, pl. liii.

43. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, II, 230-236.

44. M.A. Hanfmann, The Seasons Sarcophagus, I, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1951, 75.

45. A detailed treatment of the Seasons mosaics of North Africa is provided by D. Parrish,The Seasons Mosaics of Roman North Africa, Rome 1984. Also Blanchard-Lemée et alii,Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, ch. 2, pp. 37-64, figs 12-34.


46. Blanchard-Lemée et alii, Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, 37.

47. Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo, 100-101.

48. A detailed discussion of calendar mosaics is also presented in G. Akerström-Hougen,The Calendar and Hunting Mosaics of the Villa of the Falconer in Argos. A Study in EarlyByzantine Iconography, Stockholm 1974; for the calendar mosaic at Carthage, p. 143, fig.80.

49. M. Avi-Yonah, “Mosaic Pavements at El Hammam, Beisan”, QDAP 5 (1935) 11-30,pls xv and xvi.

50. See note 40.

51. Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo, 277, pls 47 and 50.

52. Akerström-Hougen, The Calendar, 72.

of the Four Seasons had a two-fold underlying rationale.46 Firstly, theyevoked cyclical time with its rhythmic phases corresponding to the perio-dicity of nature (and thus of agricultural cycles), and emphasized the per-petual renewal of the people whom the countryside supported. Secondly,the inclusion of the Four Seasons in art was an important staple of imperialpropaganda: the seasonal renewal of nature was seen as guaranteeing therenewal of the empire. According to this concept, social disorder and warwere seen as a threat both to the imperial regime and the harmony and sta-bility of nature and society which depended upon it.

Saller and Bagatti viewed the origins of Gê in a similar vein to those ofthe Four Seasons.47 They suggested that this personification was related tothe Classical type of “abundance”, as exemplified on a statue from theTorlonia museum in Rome. This is a full-length figure holding fruits in alength of cloth. Similarly, the Labours of the Months known from a numberof mosaics in the Roman period, depicted figures with a similar attitude tothe personifications discussed above and presumably developed out of a par-allel tradition. One of the earliest known examples in mosaic art is from avilla at Carthage dated to between the 2nd and the 4th centuries AD,48 butthe earliest popular liturgical calendar goes back to the 1st or 2nd century BCand is preserved in a bas-relief which currently decorates a wall of the LesserMetropolitan Church, Hagios Eleutherios, in Athens. Two examples from 6thcentury Palestine come from Beth Shean, namely the mosaic of the monthsin the narthex of a funerary chapel at El-Hammam,49 and the Monastery ofLady Mary (ca. 550-600).50 Another example is provided by the Church ofElias, Mary and Soreg at Gerasa (ca. 550).51 Such calendars traditionallyportrayed allegorical and religious cycles and official events, but it has beensuggested that by the Early Byzantine period profane themes such as sym-bols of agriculture, husbandry and hunting tended to predominate.52

M. W. MERRONY452

53. P. Gauckler, Inventaire des mosaïques de la Gaule et de l’Afrique. II: AfriqueProconsulaire (Tunisie), Paris 1910, 64 and plate; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman NorthAfrica, 49, pl. 22.

54. P. Gauckler, “Le Domaine des Laberii à Uthina”, Monuments et Mémoires publiés parl’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Fondation Piot, III (1896) 177-299, pls. xx-xxii; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 61, pl. 44; Blanchard-Lemée et alii,Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, 112, fig 74.

55. A.D. Trendall, The Shellal Mosaic, Melbourne 1973, pl. i.

56. A. Carandini - A. Ricci - A. De Vos, Filosofiana, the Villa at Piazza Armerina: theimage of a Roman Aristocrat at the time of Constantine, II, Palermo 1982, pls xxvii-xxxi.

57. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I, 237-244, fig. 86; II, pls liia and b.

The hunting scene

Two basic types of hunting scene are found in the Early Byzantine pave-ments of Arabia and Palestine, namely the chase and what has been re-garded as the big-game hunt. The chase was a popular theme in Romanmosaics. In North African mosaics, it occurs, for example, in the form ofthe hare hunt as in the Maison de la Chasse à Courre at El Djem (ca. 250),53

and in the Maison des Laberii at Oudna (275-325).54 The hare hunt was alsoa conspicuous feature of 6th century mosaics in the Levant. In Arabia, forinstance, it appears in the Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius(Fig. 6), while in Palestine it is depicted on the pavement of the Church ofShellal (Fig. 7).55

From a very early date, the representation of the big-game hunt was oneof the most frequent in the repertory of ancient mosaics. It generally fellinto two main types. The first tended to depict human and animal combat,often assumed to reflect the hunting activities of the patron responsible forthe commissioning of the mosaic. The second portrayed the capture andtransportation of big-game animals for public spectacle, such as the “GreatHunt” from the villa of Piazza Armerina in Sicily.56 In this example, thecapture and transportation of beasts for public display were treated on aparticularly vast scale.

Levi has presented a convincing argument in which he suggested that anumber of motifs from generic hunting scenes derived from ancient repre-sentations of mythological episodes, including that of the Calydonian Hunt(Fig. 8).57 He contended that through time, they tended to loose theirmythological aspect and gain more of a symbolical value. In this vein ithas been suggested by K. Dunbabin that in the Roman period the huntingscene of the urban villa context essentially reflected the activities of the


patron on his rural estate.58 The popularity of this scene was thus viewedas a desire to glorify the patron by showing his possessions and his favour-ite activities in a purely materialistic fashion. A similar argument has beenespoused by M. Ennaïfer, who cites the example of the pavement depictingthe estate of Lord Julius (ca. 375-400).59 Ennaïfer draws attention to thefact that the composition is centred on the presentation of the villa, which,on account of its massive character and imposing proportions, constitutes asymbol of the magnificence of the landowner who commissioned the work.The various agricultural scenes grouped around the central villa are simi-larly designed to satisfy the landowner’s desire for show. Among these area hunting scene, which, it is argued, is essentially incorporated to suggestthe brave pursuits (virtus) of the patron.

It may be reasonably demonstrated that 6th century Levantine pave-ments derived their subject matter from the same sources as their Romanpredecessors. The Calydonian Hunt was frequently depicted on Roman sar-cophagi, as well as on mosaic pavements, notably the Constantinian Villaat Antioch (Fig. 8). In the myth of the Calydonian Hunt, Artemis, principalgoddess of the Hunt, had sent the Calydonian boar to devastate the coun-tryside of the Northern Peloponnese. At the head of a gathering of heroesfrom all over Greece, Meleager killed the boar and gave its skin to Atalantawith whom he was enamoured.60 In the 4th century scene from theConstantinian Villa, Meleager is depicted violently bent forward in antici-pation of combat, thrusting his probolium against the boar at an obliqueangle. Before him, Atalanta, whose body is bent parallel to that ofMeleager, is depicted shooting an arrow against a lion. Levi has pointedout that this last action is a variation on the original myth in which Atalantawas preparing to shoot at the boar. Another variation can be found in amosaic from a villa near Leptis Magna. On this occasion Atalanta shootsan arrow from the back of a rearing horse.61 On a silver dish from theBrummer Collection of Medieval Art, two lion hunters are depicted, a maleon foot shooting an arrow and a female on a rearing horse brandishing a

58. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 35-36.

59. M. Ennaïfer has examined the rôle of hunting and other rural scenes as reflecting theprestige of the villa patron in Blanchard-Lemée et alii, Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, 167-187; on the Lord Julius mosaic, pp. 169-170, figs 120 and 121.

60. Diodorus Siculus, 4. 34. 2-4, translated by C.H. Oldfather, London - Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts 1961; Ovid, Metamorphoses 8. 270, translated by F. Bomer, Heidelberg 1978.Dauphin, “Carpets of Stone”, 9, provides a concise account of this myth.

61. P. Romanelli, Leptis Magna, Rome 1925, 50, figs 78-80.

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spear against the lion at an oblique angle.62 In both this example and thescene from the Constantinian Villa, the lion stricken by the arrow is de-picted biting the arrow which has wounded it.

Thus, several permutations of the Calydonian Hunt existed in the vari-ous artistic media of the Roman period. This point is significant as regardsthe variations of 6th century hunting scenes and their Classical antecedents.Several sites on Mount Nebo serve to illustrate the point. The Church ofthe Deacon Thomas is one such example (Fig. 4).63 A medallion depicts anarcher firing an arrow at a stricken lion who seems to be gnawing at anarrow, while another medallion encloses a scene of a combat between ahunter with a probolium, and a lion. On the nave pavement in the Churchof the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius (Fig. 6), the latter scene is repeated,this time the lion being substituted by a bear. In the Church of St George(Fig. 3), a mounted archer is depicted firing at a stricken lion, which alsognaws at an arrow.

A number of hunting scenes are also apparent in the Old DiakonikonBaptistery on Mount Nebo.64 This pavement is arranged in four horizontalregisters. In the top row, two separate scenes of hunters are engaged incombat with a lion and lioness respectively. In the second row two sepa-rate scenes depict mounted horsemen slaying a bear and a boar respec-tively. These scenes are a recurring theme in 6th century Arabia. Theyoccur, for example, at Madaba in the field of the Burnt Palace and in theborder of the Hippolytus Hall (Fig. 1), while at Amman, in the Chapel ofKhirbat al-Kursi, the field also depicts a hunter with a spear combating alion.65 Likewise, at Beth Shean in Palestine, similar scenes are discernible.For instance, in the main hall of the El-Hammam tomb chamber (Fig. 9),66

a hunter is depicted slaying a boar with his probolium, this scene being

62. The Dark Ages, no. 72; Illustrated in Art News, 1937, 10. The Brummer Collection ofMedieval Art is currently displayed in the Duke University Museum of Art, North Caro-lina. See C. Bruzelius - J. Meredith, The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art, Durham -London 1991. The dish itself is unpublished in this work.

63. Piccirillo, Chiese e Mosaici, 216-223; Id., The Mosaics of Jordan, 180-185, pls 252-259, 261-263.

64. M. Piccirillo, “Campagna Archeologica nella Basilica di Mosé Profeta sul Monte Nebo- Siyagha (1 luglio - 7 settembre 1976)”, LA 26 (1976) 281-318, esp. 299-316, frontispiece,figs 1 and 2; Id., The Mosaics of Jordan, 134-163, pls 165-211.

65. M. Piccirillo - A. ‘Amr, “A Chapel at Khirbet el-Kursi - Amman”, LA 38 (1988) 361-82; Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 265, pls 476-479.

66. Dauphin, “A New Method”, 156, fig. 1.


repeated in two other medallions. In Room L of the Monastery of LadyMary, a man hunting is portrayed in a medallion of the uppermost row.

In these examples, not only the scenes, but also detailed aspects of thevarious figures depicted, match those of the Calydonian Hunt and its vari-ants. For example, in each case, the hunter, whether on foot or mounted, isalways depicted on the left facing the hunted animal to the right. The bowis always held with the left hand of the archer, and the drawing of the stringis always executed with the right hand. In the case of the hunter on foot,the body is often tilted forward and the probolium is always held with thesame hand position as in the earlier models. In short, there is every reasonto assume from these examples that the mosaicists of the 6th century Le-vant were deriving their inspiration from earlier models.

The same appears equally to apply to the other type of big-game hunt de-picted in the 6th century. Traditionally in the Roman period, the capture andtransportation of big-game animals for public spectacle formed a conspicuouselement of the artistic repertory in mosaics. The best example, already men-tioned, is the “Great Hunt” in the 4th century villa of Piazza Armerina in Sicily.The subject matter of this pavement was devoted to the capture of large animalsand their subsequent transportation for use in the imperial circus by thevenatores. This kind of scene might also be assumed to reflect the activities ofthe patron, essentially symbolising his wealth and prestige. This tradition wouldseem to have been very much alive in a number of later Levantine examples. InArabia, for instance, in the Church of St George on Mount Nebo (Fig. 3), andat Umm al-Rasas in the Church of the Bishop Sergius (587/88), hunters aredepicted immobilising a bull.67 In the bottom row of the Old Diakonikon Bap-tistery on Mount Nebo, two venatores are shown leading an ostrich, zebra andcamel away to captivity. Similarly, in the Monastery of Lady Mary at Beth Shean(Fig. 9), a medallion depicts a man leading a camel by a rope.

The pastoral scene

The origins of the pastoral scene may be traced back to the idyllic-pastoralrepertory of Hellenistic art. In North Africa, this kind of scene occurred in aset of emblemata in the Zliten villa (ca. 75-100).68 One emblema depicted

67. Dauphin, “A New Method”, 370, pl. 366.

68. S. Aurigemma, I Mosaici di Zliten, Rome 1926, 84-97, figs 50-61; Dunbabin, The Mo-saics of Roman North Africa, 109, pl. 95-96.

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the care of flocks, with sheep grazing and a goat being milked. Similarly, atLeptis Magna, in the Villa di Orfeo, a fragmentary panel of the Orpheusmosaic portrayed a milking shepherd watched by a bearded figure leaningon his stick, one end of which rested under his armpit (ca. 150-200).69 Asomewhat later mosaic from Carthage, the Mosaic of Dominus Julius (re-viewed above), depicted a shepherd seated in front of his hut watching hisflock. This type of scene, akin to the rôle of the hunting scene, was designedto portray an element of rural activity on the villa estate and may also beregarded as symbolic of the patron’s wealth and prestige. The pastoral sceneoften accompanied other rural scenes, frequently hunting activity.

Hunting and pastoral scenes were also depicted in juxtaposition on avilla pavement in Room 21 of the Maison des Laberii at Oudna (ca. 160-180).70 The composition is centred on a shepherd leaning on his stick inthe entrance of a hut watching over his goat herd. Above and below himare two scenes of ploughing, flanked by a pastoral scene and two huntingscenes. This apparent interrelationship between idyllic and violent scenesrecurs in later Levantine examples and will be discussed below.

In the Provinces of Arabia and Palestine, a number of examples fromthe Mount Nebo and Beth Shean areas contain similar scenes to those de-scribed above. In the Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius (Fig.6), the vine rinceau encloses a shepherd resting on his stick, one end ofwhich rests under his armpit, as well as two grazing sheep. Likewise theshepherd-with-stick motif is repeated in the Church of the Deacon Thomas(Fig. 4). Other scenes include grazing goats and sheep. The mosaic pave-ment of the Upper Chapel of the Priest John also contains a grazing sheep(Fig. 5), while the third register of the pavement in the Old DiakonikonBaptistery is dedicated entirely to a shepherd and his flock of sheep andgoats. In Palestine at Beth Shean, the pavement of the main hall at El-Hammam (Fig. 9) depicts a goat as well as two fleeing sheep.71 In theMonastery of Lady Mary, a shepherd rests on one foot but his flock is no-where to be found. The border of the villa pavement at Beit Guvrin con-tains a shepherd holding out his right hand, while a ram is confronted by alion in an octagonal medallion of the field.

69. S. Aurigemma, Mosaici della Tripolitania, XX, 52-54, pls. 106-114; Dunbabin, TheMosaics of Roman North Africa, 109.

70. Gauckler, “Le Domaine des Laberii”, 200, pl. xxii; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of RomanNorth Africa, 51, 112, pl. 101; Blanchard-Lemée et alii, Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, 170,fig. 121.

71. Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo, 93.


Mythological scenes

It was suggested above that the big-game hunt in the Roman period hadfirm mythological connotations. Mythological scenes per se were also ex-tremely popular in the repertory of Roman mosaics, especially Dionysiacscenes in North Africa and the eastern provinces. Dionysiac figures, nota-bly dancing satyrs, bacchantes and Bacchic Erotes, had been part of thegeneral artistic koinè from the Hellenistic period onwards. Dunbabin hassuggested that the extensive use of Dionysiac figures for decorative pur-poses was dictated by contemporary fashion and was not necessarily con-nected with the Dionysiac cult and mysteries which were a vital religiousforce in that period.72 Dancing satyrs and bacchantes are often used as fig-ures devoid of cultic connotations, and were combined or repeated to fillspaces or to supplement other figures or groups. Thus, satyrs were used toevoke the Seasons on the triclinium-mosaic of the Maison de la Processiondionysiaque at El-Djem in Tunisia.

Scenes may be divided generally into four main categories. The figureof the child Dionysus riding upon a tiger or on another other big cat was as-sociated with scenes depicting the cult of Dionysus as well as with proces-sions in the god’s honour. One such example comes from the Maison de laProcession dionysiaque at El Djem (ca. 240-260).73 The second category ofpavements represents the Triumph of Dionysus in which the god rides in hischariot followed by his cortège. An early version of this kind of scene isfound in a pavement from the Maison de l’Arsenal at Sousse (ca. 200-210).Dionysus is depicted in a chariot, accompanied by a Victory who crownshim, and is attended by various other companions (such as bacchantes andsatyrs). He wears a leopardskin, carries a thyrsus and his head is crowned bya wreath of grapes and vine leaves.74 Various scenes from the Dionysiacmyths constitute a third but rarer category. One such example comes fromthe Maison des Laberii at Oudna. This pavement depicts Dionysius’ gift ofthe vine to Icarius on a panel at the centre of a vine-rinceau pavement with

72. A detailed discussion of the possible significance of Dionysiac scenes in the Romanperiod is provided by Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 173-187.

73. L. Foucher, La Maison de la Procession dionysiaque à El Jem, Paris 1963, 52-56, plsxvi- xvii; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 176, pl. 176; Blanchard-Leméeet alii, Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, 88-89, fig. 57.

74. L. Foucher, Inventaire des mosaïques, feuille no. 57 de l’atlas archéologique: Sousse,Tunis 1960, pl. xxiii; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa; Blanchard-Lemée etalii, Floor Mosaics from Tunisia, 100-101, figs 64 and 65.

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75. Gauckler, “Le Domaine des Laberii”, 208-210, pl. xxi; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Ro-man North Africa, 117 n. 28, 182-183; Blanchard-Lemée et alii, Floor Mosaics from Tuni-sia, 111-113, 115, figs 73 and 74.

76. L. Foucher, “Découvertes archéologiques à Thysdrus en 1961”, Notes et Documents 5(1961) 16-19, pls xv-xviii; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 184.

77. See note 33.

78. A number of examples of Dionysiac pavements in the Levant are reviewed and dis-cussed in Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I, 40-46, 72-73, fig. 29, 91-104, 141-155, 156-162; II, pls xvi-xxviii, xxix-xxxii and li.

79. J. Balty, La mosaïque de Sarrîn (Osrhoene), Paris 1990. See also P. Donceel-Voûte,Les pavements des églises byzantines de Syrie et du Liban. Décor, archéologie et liturgie,Louvain-la-Neuve 1988, for a more general review and discussion of 6th century Syro-Phoenician mosaic iconography.

vintaging erotes.75 Finally, some pavements do not illustrate a narrative epi-sode: a static Dionysus in bust or full-length, sometimes alone, or with vari-ous companions, constitutes the focus of the pavement. One such exampleis the triclinium pavement from the Sollertiania Domus, where DionysiosPais riding the leopard appears without any of the attendants who elsewhereemphasize the initiatory significance of the subject.76

In some cases, Dionysiac scenes are associated with scenes of rural lifein which idyllic and violent themes are juxtaposed. For example, in a pave-ment from the Maison de Silène at El-Djem, the central compartment of thepavement depicts putti and nymph binding a drunken Silenus. In the fieldsurrounding this compartment, a number of putti are depicted engaged invintaging scenes; running around the periphery of the field are various wildbeasts such as big cats and bears, and at least one pastoral scene.77 Likewiseat Oudna, in the Icarius pavement, the Dionysiac scene of the main panel isassociated with a hunting scene in an adjacent panel.

Dionysiac scenes are particularly characteristic of the Levantine villain the Roman and Early Byzantine periods. A number of examples arefound at Antioch, including the Houses of the Drunken Dionysus and ofthe Bacchic Thiasos, the House of the Triumph of Dionysus (ca.100-200);the House of Dionysus and Ariadne (ca.190-240); the House of theDrunken Dionysus (ca. 120-200 and ca. 235-312); and the House of theDrinking Contest (ca. 193-235).78 Later examples of mythological pave-ments are a rarer phenomenon in Syria. However, one notable exception isa 6th century reception hall pavement uncovered at Sarrîn which consistsof a wide repertory of mythological scenes including the Rape of Europa,Artemis hunting, Meleager and Atalanta, Dionysus awakening Ariadne, andan extensive Dionysiac scene.79


80. Netzer - Weiss, Zippori, 30-39.

81. Rahmani, “The Erez Mosaic”.

82. A concise description of the mythological aspect of these pavements is given byPiccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 66-80.

83. Piccirillo, Chiese e mosaici, 136-138; Id., The Mosaics of Jordan, 76-77, figs 32, 43and 48.

The Roman period is represented in Palestine by a particularly fineDionysiac pavement from the triclinium of a villa at Sepphoris (ca. 200-225).80 Various panels depict a number of scenes from the life of Dionysus,including the bathing of the god at his birth, his upbringing by the nymphsof Mount Nysa, his triumphal procession on his return from India, and hismarriage to Ariadne. Other scenes illustrate various aspects of theDionysiac cult, such as the treading of grapes, shepherds, and gift-bearing.The central panel is devoted to a drinking contest between Dionysus andHerakles. Two other panels depict Dionysus and Herakles drunk.

Two examples from villae in Early Byzantine Palestine, mentioned ear-lier, merit further attention. A fragmentary pavement from Erez (ca. 450-500) depicts a procession in which an elephant follows a group of tigersled on a leash by a man in Phrygian dress. This scene has been plausiblyinterpreted as a variant of the representations of the Indian triumph ofDionysus.81 The second example is a pavement from Cheikh Zuweid dat-ing from the 4th century onwards. The middle panel of this pavement de-picts Dionysus sitting in a chariot. In front of him sits an Eros holding thereins of two centaurs. Behind the chariot of Dionysus grows a vine and nearthe chariot a panther drinks the wine that Dionysus is pouring from anamphora.

Several villae in Madaba in Arabia exhibit mythological pavements.82

In the central panel from the Bacchic Procession (Fig. 2), only two figures(Banche and Satyr), remain of the three original figures which includedAriadne. A scantily clad Maenad performs a ritual dance in which her lefthand strikes cymbals which are tied to her right foot. Next to her, anaroused naked satyr with a distended belly and an erect penis holds a stickin his right hand. Another example, the Mosaic of Achilles, depicts Achil-les, Patroclus and a young woman named “Eubre” in its lower register,while the upper panel portrays the fragmentary remains of a Bacchic pro-cession in which a satyr playing a flute is followed by a figure wearing along tunic.83 Another fragmentary panel from an unknown context in theimmediate vicinity depicts a young naked Hercules strangling a lion. A lastexample is a pavement from the Hippolytus Hall (Fig. 1), the central and

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third panels of which respectively portray the myth of Hippolytus andPhaedra, and Aphrodite and Adonis. The field is framed by an inhabitedacanthus scroll which contain hunting and pastoral scenes.

A recurring feature among each category of iconographic theme,whether arable, hunting, pastoral, or mythological, is that each would seemto have a long history, running from Hellenistic times through the Romanperiod to the Levantine examples of the Early Byzantine period. A funda-mental issue still to be addressed, however, is whether these various themesretained their significance in the secular and religious contexts of EarlyByzantine Arabia and Palestine.

Mythological Scenes in Early Byzantine Mosaic Pavements in the Prov-inces of Arabia and Palestine

It was established above that the presence of mythological scenes, notablythose of Dionysus and his retinue on the mosaic floors of villae, may haverepresented a strong pagan religious element in Roman society. One of thefundamental characteristics of the Early Byzantine period, however, wasthe adoption of Christianity as the official State religion. Consequently, theperiod saw the addition of mosaic art to a new functional setting – theChurch – and the emergence of a Christian élite as public and private spon-sors.84 Thus, the appearance of traditional pagan scenes in the residencesof Christian patrons requires some explanation. Two lines of inquiry maybe pursued here. Firstly, several scholars have argued that the period whena number of the villa pavements were laid – the 6th century – correspondedto the Justinianic era in which art underwent a “Classical Renaissance”.Secondly, the mythological scenes of the period may also have taken on anew significance appropriate to the State religion.

The “Justinianic Renaissance”

The earlier part of Justinian’s reign has been viewed as characterized by asense of revival and restoration which influenced political events and poli-cies such as the reconquest of the western provinces, as well as literature

84. M. Whittow, “Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: a Continuous History”,Past and Present 129 (1990) 3-29.


and art.85 This view derives in part from a number of contemporary sources,such as John the Lydian who considered that “the emperor’s excellence wasso great that institutions that have come to ruin in the past are eagerlyawaiting a rebirth by his intervention.”86

Piccirillo has argued that the iconography of the Hippolytus mosaic,which notably depicted the Classical myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus (Fig.1), can best be explained by “the propagandist, ideological, political andeconomic movements of the Justinianic reformation and renaissance‘which’ were widely established throughout the empire.”87

According to E. Kitzinger, a number of 6th century mosaics clearlyexemplify Classical stylistic traits.88 He points out, for example, that themosaics of the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna (ca. 550) display a senseof lushness in contrast to a stark geometry. Moreover, spaces are filled witha rich and naturalistic vegetation instead of being an abstract void. The ten-dency was also to render the mosaics as self-contained compositional unitsreminiscent of the traditional emblema: figures and groups of figures werethus portrayed in a clearly delimited environment, framing and framed partsbeing clearly distinguished and creating a pseudo-emblema according toKitzinger’s terminology. Kitzinger cites the north wing of the transept ofthe Church of St Demetrius in Nikopolis in Epirus (ca. 525-550) as an ex-ample of a pseudo-emblema mosaic.89 Here, a realistically rendered sceneis enclosed within five framing bands beginning with a bead-and-reel bor-der and a running spiral - Classical framing motifs for emblemata. How-ever, it is pointed out by Kitzinger that the panel picture, unlike the true

85. A discussion of a revival in the early part of the Justinianic period is provided by A.Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century, London 1985, ch. 2, pp. 19-32.

86. J. Lydus, De Magistratibus, II.5.3. The theme of restoration in the Justinianic period isaddressed by M. Maas, Innovation and Restoration in Justinianic Constantinople, PhD the-sis, Berkeley 1982, and by M. Maas, John Lydus and Roman Past; Antiquarianism andpolitics in the age of Justinian, London - New York 1992, esp. ch. 6, pp. 83-96.

87. A discussion of the Classical tradition in the mosaics of 6th century Madaba is presentedby Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 23-26.

88. A concise analysis of an apparent Classical tradition in a number of 6th century floorand vault mosaics is provided by E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making, London 1977,81-98.

89. E. Kitzinger, “Studies in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Floor Mosaics. I: Mosaicsat Nikopolis’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 6 (1951) 81-122, figs 18-19. The return to Classi-cism in the art of the Justinianic period is discussed by E. Kitzinger, The Art of Byzantiumand the Medieval West: Selected Studies by Ernst Kitzinger, Bloomington - London 1976,49-63.

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emblema of the Roman period, respected the integrity of the floor; thematrix remaining basically intact. In a similar vein, Dauphin regards theecclesiastical pavement at Shelomi as representing a conscious return toRoman principles, this pavement exemplifying the so-called pseudo-emblema.90 This particular pavement contains a central geometric motifincorporating trompe l’oeil effects of receding planes and surfaces whichprovided a focus for a highly organised matrix of motifs.

While it might seem reasonable to suppose that the various mythologi-cal scenes encountered in the Levantine context are indeed the product ofconscious artistic classicism, a number of problems are inherent to this the-sis. According to A. Cameron, the concept of artistic classicism as a clearlydefined characteristic of the period is questionable since the dating of anumber of individual works assigned to the period is uncertain.91 ThePantokrator in the church of the Monastery of St Catherine at Sinai, hasbeen dated by Weitzmann to the Justinianic period on stylistic criteria,92 butby Kitzinger to ca. 700.93 The mosaic pavement of the Great Palace of theByzantine emperors in Constantinople provides another example of a simi-lar dilemma.

It has been noted by J. Trilling, that both stylistically and thematicallythis pavement bears a considerable resemblance to a hunting mosaic fromthe Villa of the Triclinos at Apamea in Syria dated to the Justinianic pe-riod.94 However, Trilling has persuasively argued that the Great Palacepavement belongs to the reign of Heraclius (610-641), a period which isalso characterized by a major Classical revival. We might also consider L.Rodley’s suggestion that the reign of Justinian in particular was the periodin which the formal and stylistic developments of the early Christian cen-turies matured, producing a Byzantine art and architecture that acknowl-

90. C. Dauphin, “Une mosaique de la ‘Renaissance justinienne’ en Galilée occidentale”, inR. Ling (ed.), Fifth International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, Journal of Roman Ar-chaeology Supplementary Series 9, Part 2 (1995) 101-112, figs 1-6.

91. Cameron, Procopius, 19-20.

92. K. Weitzmann, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: the Icons. I: Fromthe Sixth to the Tenth Centuries, Princeton 1976, B1; K. Weitzmann (ed.), Age of Spiritual-ity. Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, New York 1979, 527-528.

93. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art, 120, fig. 177.

94. A detailed discussion of the problems inherent to the dating of the Great Palace pave-ment is offered by J. Trilling, “The Soul of the Empire: Style and meaning in the MosaicPavement of the Byzantine Imperial Palace in Constantinople”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers43 (1989) 27-72, esp. 36-54, pls A-D, figs 1-40, main plan 57.


edged - but was now largely independent of - its Roman origins.95 Indeed,he points out that the church architecture of Constantinople, notably StaSophia, Sts Sergius and Bacchus and St Polyeuktos anticipated the ornatedomed buildings with complex interior spaces that were to become charac-teristic of later Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture. In the artistic sphere,too, he emphasizes that there was also a discernible weakening of linkswith the Classical past as manifest in the continued decline of free-stand-ing statuary, portraiture and naturalism in general.

To return more specifically to the Levantine context, chronological andstylistic problems should also be taken into account. Dauphin has statedthat “the Dionysiac processions at Erez and Cheikh Zuweid ... witness fur-ther to the forceful resurgence of Classical iconographic themes.”96 A par-ticularly fine example of a Dionysiac pavement at Sepphoris in Palestinehas been dated to the 3rd century. The Erez pavement has been dated to ca.450-500. A post Constantinian date has been ascribed to the pavement atCheikh Zuweid on stylistic grounds, which could place it anywhere be-tween the 4th and mid-7th century. Thus there is no evidence that either ofthe last two examples date to the Justinianic period. The three pavementsmay well be indicative of a continuity with a sudden flowering (rather thanof a resurgence) of Classical iconographic themes. As regards style, it iswidely accepted that between the mid-2nd and mid-4th centuries, figuraliconography was generally characterized by a transition from a plastic to alinear rendition, and together with this recessive trend, depth and perspec-tive gave way to abstractness.97 Thus, in order to prove the hypothesis of aconscious return to Classicism a greater number of examples than thoseavailable should exhibit plasticity and realism. This is clearly not the case.A. Ovadiah and R. Ovadiah have said of the Cheikh Zuweid pavement:“Dori Levi rightly dates ... this mosaic to the reign of Constantine at theearliest. The phenomenon of a free composition with flat two-dimensionalfigures and no ground line or background but seeming rather to float inspace, is encountered in Israel and beyond from this period on.”98 The

95. A concise discussion of the artistic style and influences of the sixth century, particu-larly of the Justinianic period, is presented by L. Rodley, Byzantine Art and Architecture:An Introduction, Cambridge 1994, 111-114.

96. Dauphin “Carpets of Stone”, 25-26.

97. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 35-36, discusses stylistic changethrough the Roman period. Likewise, stylistic change in artistic media of the Roman periodis discussed by L’Orange - Nordhagen, Mosaics, 3-6.

98. Ovadiah and Ovadiah, Mosaic Pavements, 154.

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Madaba examples would also seem to follow a similar pattern: stylistically,the figures exhibit clear traits of linearity, with an essentially abstract back-ground (Figs 1 and 2).

How may these pavements be reconciled with isolated cases dated se-curely to the Justinianic period and clearly exhibiting a stylistic Classicism?A reasonable solution to this contention is perhaps provided by Rodley whosuggests that artistic production in the Empire in the 6th century was multi-faceted, with craftsmanship of high quality available in several importantcentres as well as the capital, offering a range of styles to suit patrons withvarious tastes.99 In short then, continuity of iconographic themes as well asa flowering of artistic Classicism may best explain the presence of Classi-cal mythological scenes in the Early Byzantine villa context, rather than anempire-wide artistic Renaissance. However, the presence of pagan themesin the villae of the Christian élite still requires some explanation.

Pagan mythological themes in the villa context of the Christian patron –a paradox?

It was noted above that in the Roman period, the choice of Dionysiacscenes in mosaic floor art need not necessarily have had any religious sig-nificance, but could have simply been a preferred decorative scheme. Thismight also partly explain the apparent paradox of pagan mythological ico-nography in the residences of the Christian élite in the Early Byzantineperiod. However, there is good reason to suppose that a deeper symbolicmeaning underlies these scenes. In order to explore this idea, let us exam-ine a number of Roman pavements in North Africa.

Above we have shown that the vine, vintaging, and Dionysiac sceneswere clearly associated on some pavements.100 Mosaics with similar sub-ject form a coherent group in the Proconsular province ranging in date fromthe mid-2nd to the early 5th century. The vine is arranged in one of twobasic patterns: either as a formal border rinceau, or covering the entire fieldwith its branches. These field patterns became increasingly geometricizedthrough time until they were completely assimilated within the formalrinceau, ultimately resulting in an all-over scroll consisting of a series of

99. Rodley, Byzantine Art, 113.

100. See notes 33 and 74. Dionysiac scenes in North African mosaics are examined byDunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, esp. ch. 10, pp. 173-187.


linked geometric medallions. The vine tended to spring from kantharoi orfrom formal clumps of acanthus. In most of these examples, the vine wasdirectly associated with Dionysus himself, or with figures from the morelimited Dionysiac repertory who occupied the central panels or compart-ments framed by vine at the sides of the pavement. A vine mosaic in achurch at Cherchel represents one of the latest examples of this pattern.101

Another Christian example is provided by the Justinianic basilica atSabratha.102 Here, the whole floor of the nave is covered by a series of sym-metrical scrolls which enclose a phoenix, peacocks and a variety of otherbird species.

The North African examples are particularly interesting since it is possi-ble to plot the course of the vine and its symbolic associations throughout theRoman and Early Byzantine periods. In Roman villae, the vine was associ-ated with vintaging and Dionysiac scenes, whilst on Early Byzantine Chris-tian pavements, the vine was essentially used as a compositional device.

It was noted above that the vine rinceau and vintaging scenes decoratedthe floors of Early Byzantine churches in Arabia and Palestine, while theywere both absent from the repertory of villae. The mosaic pavements of thelatter were characterized by mythological scenes, frequently those ofDionysus. An interchange of meaning may have taken place here. In villae,for example, the Dionysiac scenes may have lost their pagan religious andmythological significance, but by retaining their symbolic association withwine would have been agreeable to the convictions of the Christian patron.In other words, Dionysiac scenes would thus have become the secularcounterpart of ecclesiastical vintaging scenes.

Hunting scenes

Mythological iconography was not the only characteristic of the Early Byz-antine villa in Arabia and Palestine. It is thus perhaps appropriate here toexamine and discuss briefly the hunting scene which was also popular in

101. F.G. de Pachtère, Inventaire des mosaïques de la Gaule et de l’Afrique. III: AfriqueProconsulaire, Numidie, Maurétanie (Algérie), Paris 1911, 435; Dunbabin, The Mosaics ofRoman North Africa, 193.

102. S. Aurigemma, Mosaici della Tripolitania, V, 27-29, pls 19-34, 193, pl. 197; J.B.Ward-Perkins - R.G. Goodchild, “The Christian Antiquities of Tripolitania”, Archaeologia95 (1953) 1-82; Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 193, pl. 197; Maguire,Earth and Ocean, 61-62, figs 70 and 71.

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this context in the same period. Three examples merit particular attention.The preserved field area of the 6th century Burnt Palace mosaic at Madabacomprises a series of hunting and pastoral scenes enclosed in six rows offour acanthus scrolls. A notable feature of these scenes is an apparent di-chotomy between the peacefulness of pastoral scenes and the violence ofhuman and animal combats.

Another example is the 5th century Nile Festival pavement fromSepphoris in Palestine.103 This pavement is split into two main parts: theNile Festival, and hunting scenes. The Nile part of the pavement portraysthe Nile Festival, a theme which has a long tradition in the Roman period.The Nile itself features depictions of flora and fauna characteristic of theriver in the period. Above the river is a Nilometer, next to which stands ahalf-naked personification of Egypt, to which corresponds the personifica-tion of the Nile River, in the opposite corner. Beneath the Nile River, thefestival held in honour of the Nile in flood was depicted twice. The rest ofthe lower part of the pavement was devoted to various hunting scenes, thisincluding a lion devouring an ox, a bear devouring a wild boar, and a pan-ther attacking a gazelle. A notable feature of this pavement appears to beonce more an apparent dichotomy between, on the one hand, the “idyllic”,as manifest by the celebration of the Nile Festival, and the “violent”, asrepresented by the hunting scene below.

A final example is provided by the Hippolytus hall pavement (Fig. 1),where a representation of the Classical myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus inthe field is framed by a border depicting a series of hunting scenes.

The Iconography of “Inhabited Scroll” pavements in the churches of 6thcentury Arabia and Palestine

The iconography of arable, hunting and pastoral scenes on the pavementsof the Early Byzantine churches of Arabia and Palestine developed out of along tradition in the Roman period. Some of the allegorical/symbolic as-pects of these scenes have already been touched upon here. Let us nowassess whether Early Byzantine church pavements bear the same symbol-ism. The fundamental aspects required to be discussed are the mode ofcomposition and the various iconographic categories - arable (incorporat-ing agricultural personifications), hunting and pastoral scenes.

103. Discussed and illustrated in Netzer - Weiss, Zippori, 46-51.


The iconography of inhabited scroll pavements

In Arabia, these scenes are common to a group of pavements in the MountNebo area (Figs 3, 4, 5 and 6) and include the sites of the Church of theHoly Martyrs Lot and Procopius (557), the Upper Chapel of the Priest John(565), the Church of St George (535/6) and the Church of the Deacon Tho-mas (ca. mid-6th century). Similar examples in Palestine include the Mon-astery of Lady Mary, and the El-Hammam tomb chamber (Fig. 9) at BethShean (dated respectively to 567 and the mid-6th century), the Church ofShellal (Fig. 7) near Gaza (561-2), the church at Horvat Be‘er-shema (6thcentury)104 and the Church at Qam (ca. 550).105

Inhabited scroll pavements are also present in synagogues in the region.A fine example is the nave pavement from the synagogue at Ma‘on in theNegev (ca. 500-550),106 which contains a vine rinceau pavement inhabitedby a number of faunal species and inanimate objects. The significance ofsynagogue iconography, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.

Arable scenes

The arable scenes in Early Byzantine ecclesiastical contexts follow themodel of their Roman antecedents, that is the portrayal of the vine harvestand its associated activities such as the transportation of the grapes fromthe vineyard and their subsequent pressing and treading. A second kind ofscene involves the presentation of a fruit harvest to a central personifica-

104. D. Gazit - Y. Lender, “The Church of St Stephen at Horvat Be’er-shem‘a”, in Y. Tsafrir(ed.), Ancient Churches Revealed, Jerusalem 1993, 273-276, pls. xvii A-D, xviii A-F. Anothermosaic worth mentioning in the Levant is the vine rinceau pavement from Qabr Hiram inPhoenicia (Fig. 10), published by E. Renan, Mission de Phénicie, Paris 1871, 607-631, pl. 49.A variation on arable, hunting and pastoral themes is represented on the particularly well pre-served 6th-century pavement in the Armenian funerary chapel in Jerusalem (Fig. 11). Schick,PEFQSt (1894), 257; Bliss, PEFQSt (1894), 261. The subject matter of this pavement is pre-dominantly of birds. Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome, 62, has suggested that birds were sym-bolic of immortality in Early Byzantine ecclesiastical buildings. Likewise, a similar argumenthas been espoused by Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 60-61. The subject matter would then fitthe function of this context particularly well.

105. F. Tarawneh, “Qam Salvage Excavation”, Newsletter of the Institute of Archaeologyand Anthropology Yarmouk University 9 (1990) 12; Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 340,figs 682, 746-750.

106. M. Avi-Yonah, “The Ancient Synagogue of Ma‘on (Nirim): E. The Mosaic Pavement”,Louis M. Rabinowitz Bulletin III (1960) 25-35, fig. 13, pls iii-viii.

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tion. Frequently, these scenes are associated with personifications of themonths and/or personifications of the Four Seasons. There are a number ofpossible explanations for the inclusion of such personifications, and indeedfor the arable scenes which they frequently accompany.

Personifications of the Earth

Personifications of the Earth, Gê, as depicted on the pavements of the Up-per Chapel of the Priest John (Fig. 5), and of the Church of St George (Fig.3) at Khirbet el-Mukhayyat, are generally portrayed as part of a scene in-cluding a number of other figures. For instance, in each case Gê is depictedin the central medallion of the row, flanked and approached by two offer-ers who bear baskets of fruit. Saller and Bagatti would seem to offer a sat-isfactory explanation for this kind of scene which is essentially viewed asa celebration of the Fruits of the Earth.107 In short, they see the conceptbehind these offerings as symbolic of a pact in which one offers a gift toGod from whom one has received it, commonly expressed by the liturgicalformula: “From your gifts we offer to you...” In this case it is logicallypointed out that the offerings are the Fruits of the Earth. This explanationis further supported by H. Maguire who also views Gê as symbolising theoffering of the Earth’s fruits to God.108 Attention is drawn to the fact thatofferings are referred to in several of the inscriptions associated with thesemosaics. It is also pointed out that the concept of a Mother Earth providingfor Humanity at God’s bidding had its roots in Philo’s 1st century treatiseOn the Creation and reappeared in the commentaries on Creation attributedto the 4th century Church Fathers, St Basil, St Gregory of Nyssa, and StJohn Chrysostom. In short then, it seems reasonable to suppose that thecentral themes underlying the personifications of Gê are the celebration ofthe Earth’s fruits and its offerings to God.

The Four Seasons

We have argued earlier that in the Roman period, scenes of the Four Sea-sons served to evoke the cycle of time, and hence the renewal of nature.


108. The depictions of Gê on the mosaics of Jordan are discussed by Maguire, Earth andOcean, 69-72.


The inclusion of the Four Seasons in the artistic sphere was therefore animportant staple of imperial propaganda, the seasonal renewal of natureguaranteeing the renewal of the empire. While this explanation might wellbe appropriate for the pagan villa context of the Roman period, it could bejustifiably asked why the Four Seasons were included in the decoration ofecclesiastical buildings. There is good reason to suppose that there was abasic continuity of the two concepts outlined above. For example, it hasbeen suggested that the Four Seasons were equated by the Church with therenewal of spiritual life, and were dedicated to God by special days of fastand prayer (Ember Days).109 When inserted into the Roman liturgical cal-endar by St Leo the Great (440-61), these were referred to as an alreadyold tradition.110 Ideological reasons for the inclusion of the Four Seasonsinto the religious context could also be considered. In the Church of StGeorge (Fig. 3), for example, the Four Seasons are set into the border pan-els surrounding the main nave field. In close proximity, at the eastern endof the nave, the third part of the dedicatory inscription states: “At the timeof the most God-beloved bishop John the Holy place was built and finished,during the consulate of the most illustrious Flavorius, in the month of Diosof the fourth indiction, for the salvation of Rabbos, economos of the mostholy church, and of N., priest and sacristan of the church of St George.”

The inscription emphasizes the patronage of the local élite, possibly thebishop and/or clergy, while at the same time reducing the rôle of the Stateofficials to that of eponyms, thus linking the ruling classes of both city andState with the seasonal renewal of nature and spirituality.

The Four Seasons might also be represented on inhabited scroll pave-ments by the various activities depicted. Levi has pointed out that in theConstantinian Villa at Antioch, for instance, the Four Seasons correspondedclosely to various activities.111 Near Winter, for example, who holds an ol-ive branch, is a scene of a peasant gathering olives. Likewise, O. Pächt hasdrawn attention to the somewhat later Tacuinum Sanitatis manuscript, il-lustrated in Italy in the last quarter of the 14th century, which representsthe Seasons as a particular activity.112 Spring takes the form of gentlemendisporting themselves in the country; Summer, the reaping of corn; Autumnbecomes a vintaging scene; and Winter is portrayed as an old man. How-


110. M. Righetti, Manuale di Storia Liturgica, Milan 1945-1946, 29-33.

111. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I, 233.

112. O. Pacht, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape”, Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950) 37-38.

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ever, when a similar type of interpretation is attempted of the inhabitedscroll pavements in the Levant a problem arises. In the Church of StGeorge, for example, it is difficult to apply a Season to each of the threemain activities (arable, hunting, pastoral), for the simple reason that afourth activity, corresponding to a fourth Season, is not represented.

The Labours of the Months

A similar problem is encountered when an attempt is made to interpret thesubject matter of inhabited scroll pavements as representing the Laboursof the Months. The eastern nave panel of the Church of the Holy MartyrsLot and Procopius provides a good example (Fig. 6). It would be logicalto attempt to fit the Twelve Labours of the Months into twelve, or multi-ples thereof, into the medallions. However, this amounts to a mathemati-cal impossibility since the pavement contains twenty medallions. Likewise,the Church of the Deacon Thomas has twenty-one medallions (Fig. 4). Thesame problem is also encountered in other examples. The possibility ex-ists, of course, that the scenes represent the most important Labours of theMonths, such as the vine harvest. This is implausible, however, for a goodreason. At Beth Shean, it is interesting to note that two sites, the Monas-tery of Lady Mary and El-Hammam, contain separate pavements depict-ing the Labours of the Months and arable, hunting and pastoral scenes. Itis difficult to imagine the mosaicists laying a pavement explicitly repre-senting the Labours of the Months in one room and going to the troubleof encoding the same meaning in a pavement in another room of the samebuilding.

The vine rinceau and its possible religious significance

A number of scholars have argued that the vine had an essentially religioussymbolism in artistic media of the Roman and early Christian period. W.Oakeshott, for instance, has pointed out that prior to Christianity, the vinesymbol in particular was used to suggest the joys of immortality in theDionysiac mystery cults.113 Indeed, we have noted earlier that the vine wasoften connected with the Dionysiac repertory on North African pavements.

113. Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome, 61.


It has also been contended that the vine had symbolic connotations inChristian Rome in both Church and Synagogue.114 The Constantinian vaultof Sta Costanza in Rome contains an early example of the inhabited vinescroll mosaic in a Christian context. A. Trendall has suggested that the vinehad an essentially religious significance in church pavements.115 Saller andBagatti have likewise presented a convincing argument which views thepresence of the vine in Early Byzantine church and synagogue pavementsas symbolical of parables in the Old and New Testaments.116 They point outthat Psalm 79:9-16 and Isaiah 5:1-7 state that the Jews and Christians werethe vineyard of the Lord. The vine could also have alluded to John 15:1-7which states that Christ describes himself as the True Vine.

Maguire has also drawn attention to the religious symbolism of the vine,which represents God’s people, or Israel, in Psalm 79:8 and in Hosea 10:1,but which is first an image of Christ, and then of His people, in John 15:1-7.Likewise, he notes that the vineyard represents the people of Israel in thefifth chapter of Isaiah (5:1-7), but in Christ’s parable it becomes the King-dom of God (Matthew 21:33-43).117 The vine as a religious symbol is givenfurther weight by Maguire’s observation that the vine is sometimes accom-panied by an inscription which specifies its symbolism. In a Christian tombat Ancona, for example, the mosaic displays a vine rinceau which growsfrom a central kantharos. At the top of the vine, an inscription paraphrasesIsaiah 5:1: “A vineyard has been made beloved, on a hilltop in a fertileplace.” Maguire views the choice of this inscription for the mosaic as an in-dication that in the designer’s mind the vine stood for God’s people.

While these explanations are indeed plausible, if they are to becomeincontrovertible, it is necessary to assess to what extent the vine permeatesthe secular context. It should be reiterated here that, from our database, itis clear the vine characterized both church and synagogue pavements in 6thcentury Arabia and Palestine. By contrast, evidence for its presence in non-religious buildings is scant and contestable, thus lending a considerabledegree of support to the suggestion put forward by Saller and Bagatti thatthe vine may be regarded as a fundamentally religious symbol both in thisspecific region and specific period.

114. See the argument presented below by Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo.

115. A.D. Trendall, The Shellal Mosaic, Melbourne 1942, 16-21, discusses the vine rinceauon ecclesiastical pavements and its symbolism.

116. Saller - Bagatti, The Town of Nebo, 94-98. For the Old and New Testament sources:Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Oxford 1971.

117. Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 9-10, fig. 2.

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The significance of vintaging scenes

Likewise, it is not difficult to envisage the vintaging scene as evoking asimilar symbolical message to that of the vine, since John 15:1-7 states “Iam the true vine; ye are the branches.” It thus might reasonably be assumedthat the portrayal of vintaging activity is merely a symbolic extension ofthe presence of the vine rinceau on religious pavements. However, it shouldalso be borne in mind that vintaging scenes have been interpreted in otherways. According to Maguire, for example, vintaging scenes reflected con-temporary agricultural practice.118 In view of the fact that archaeologicalevidence for wine production in late antique Palestine is most abundant,this theory merits attention. This interpretation, however, poses a numberof difficulties. The vintaging scene in the vault of Sta Costanza might proveto illustrate the point. Two points merit discussion here. Firstly, this har-vest scene has been interpreted by Oakeshott as symbolical of the end ofone life and the beginning of another.119 This point is certainly plausiblegiven the funerary context of this particular mosaic. Secondly, this sceneprefigures the Levantine examples by some three hundred years and thussets a precedent for subsequent scenes of this nature in mosaic art. Theplausibility of vintaging scenes reflecting contemporary arable practicedepends to a large extent on the degree to which the association betweenthe artistic and archaeological records may be drawn.

Much evidence points to economic prosperity in the Levant during the5th and 6th centuries, one facet of which would appear to have been abooming wine trade in Palestine. Evidence for this comes from a numberof surveys and excavations which have revealed numerous wine-presses inIsrael, particularly in the Early Byzantine period. Z. Safrai, for example,has drawn attention to a large number of wine presses in the archaeologi-cal record of Roman Palestine;120 while in Samaria, S. Dar has examined avast number of wine presses in the Roman and Byzantine periods.121 Like-

118. Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 71.

119. A similar kind of scene is depicted on the nave pavement of the Church of St Stephenat Umm al-Rasas. The putti are replaced in this case by harvesters who tread grapes:Piccirillo - Alliata, Umm al-Rasas, 145, fig. 35.

120. S. Zafrai, The Economy of Roman Palestine, London - New York 1994, esp. 10, 83,92, 97, 188, 269, 338, 353, figs 27, 42, 43.

121. S. Dar, Landscape and Pattern. An Archaeological Survey of Samaria 800 BCE - 636CE (BAR International Series 308i), I, Oxford 1986, ch. 7, pp. 147-164; (ii), figs 14, 87-93,pls 69-73.


122. Y. Hirschfeld, “Ancient Wine Presses in the Park of Aijalon”, IEJ 33 (1983) 207-218,figs 1-2, 4-5, 7-9.

123. Y. Hirschfeld - R. Birger-Calderon, “Early Roman and Byzantine Estates nearCaesarea”, IEJ 41 (1991) 81-111, figs 7, 14-16, 27 and 28.

124. P. Watson, “Pella Hinterland Survey 1994: Preliminary Report (Site 28 Soundings byM. O’Hea)”, Levant 28 (1996) 63-76.

125. See note 40.

126. Piccirillo, “La cappella del Prete Giovanni”, 297-315; Id., The Mosaics of Jordan, 176-177, figs 234-243.

127. M. Piccirillo, “Una chiesa nell’ wadi ‘Ayoun Mousa ai piedi del monte Nebo”, LA 34(1984) 307-318; M. Piccirillo - E. Alliata, “La chiesa del monastero di Kaianos alle ‘AyounMousa sul Monte Nebo”, Quaeritur inventus colitur. Studi di Antichità cristiana in onoredi P. Umberto Fasola, Rome 1989, 536-586; Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 189, pls270-275.

128. For a map of the Mount Nebo area and its rock-cut presses, S.J. Saller, The Memorialof Moses on Mount Nebo, I, Jerusalem 1941, fig. 2.

wise, a variety of wine-presses have been identified in the park of Aijalonwest of Jerusalem by Y. Hirschfeld, including an elaborate installationwhich contained vats and a sophisticated wine-pressing mechanism.122

Y.Hirschfeld and R. Bir ger-Calderon have also studied a similar installa-tion in the hinterland of Caesarea which formed part of a villa complex.123

This contained a number of rooms of an obvious agricultural function, in-cluding a large vaulted cellar measuring 12.8 by 4 metres. Two farmsteads(one of which was associated with a wine-press) were discovered in thecourse of a survey in the hinterland of Pella in the foothills of the NorthernJordan valley. In addition, a further 21 wine presses were recorded in thecity’s hinterland.124

The Church of Bishop Sergius at Umm al-Rasas (587/88) depicts ascrew-press on a border panel of the nave pavement.125 Likewise, the pave-ments in the churches of St George and the Holy Martyrs Lot andProcopius (Figs 3 and 6) at Khirbet al-Mukhayyat close to Mount Nebo,depict scenes of agricultural workers operating screw-presses. In closeproximity, harvesting scenes are depicted on the pavements of the Churchof the Deacon Thomas (Fig. 4), the Upper Chapel of the Priest John (Fig.5), the 5th century Lower Chapel of the Priest John,126 and the 6th centuryLower Church of Kaianus.127 Of particular significance are the archaeologi-cal remains of a monastic complex dated to ca. 500 on Mount Nebo itself.Several apparently sophisticated wine-pressing installations were associ-ated with it. A small number of wine-presses were also located in the im-mediate vicinity of Mount Nebo.128 Moreover, it appears that the mosaic

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129. The technology of wine-presses during the Early Byzantine period in Palestine is ex-amined in some detail by R. Frankel - S. Avitsur - E. Ayalon, History and Technology ofOlive Oil in the Holy Land, Tel-Aviv 1992, 50-77.

130. F.M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine, I, Jérusalem 1933, 223.

131. Whittow, “Ruling”, 3-29.

pavements reflect contemporary technology, since the screw-press is notknown in Palestine before the Early Byzantine period.129 Thus, althoughreflecting the contemporary practice of wine harvesting, the vintagingscene may also have been symbolical in intent.

The hunting scene

We have already established that the two basic types of hunting scenes en-countered in 5th and 6th century inhabited scroll pavements - the chase andthe big-game hunt - expressed a continuity from their Roman antecedents.We have also suggested that Roman hunting scenes were symbolical. How-ever, one fundamental question needs to be addressed: why in the Early Byz-antine period are hunting scenes depicted in the ecclesiastical context? Doscenes of this kind reflect contemporary hunting activity? That a number ofbeasts, such as the lion and leopard depicted in inhabited scroll pavements,were native to the region during the period, is proven by written sources,particularly hagiography.130 However, this alone does not explain the pres-ence of such scenes in ecclesiastical buildings. Two possible explanationsconnected with symbolism may underlie the presence of hunting scenes inthe religious context. Firstly, it might prove instructive again to examine thetraditional relationship between such scenes in the Roman period and thepatron who commissioned them. The suggestion was put forward above, thatin the Roman period the hunting scene of the urban villae basically reflectedthe activities of their owners on their rural estates. It is generally acceptedthat the villa was the urban seat of the hereditary oligarchy of landownerswho constituted the membership of the curia. In the Early Byzantine period,however, the importance of the curia diminished to the extent that they werereplaced by a new élite. Citing evidence from the written sources (notablySaints’ Lives), M. Whittow has convincingly argued that the ruling trinity ofthe Early Byzantine city, the bishop, clergy and landowners, stemmed fromthe same social background as the curia.131 This could well explain the con-tinuity of the hunting scene and its permeation of religious iconography. This


132. A. Fitzgerald, The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene, Letter 105, Oxford 1926.

133. This kind of symbolism is dealt with in some detail by Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pave-ments, I, 340-345.

notion gains further weight from a written source attributed to the early 5thcentury. It is known from the earliest work of Bishop Synesius of Ptolemaisin Cyrenaica - the Cynegetica - that hunting was one of the bishop’s greatestpassions. Indeed, in a letter dated no later than 401, Synesius states: “Evenas a child, I was charged with a mania for arms and horses. I shall be grieved,indeed greatly shall I suffer at seeing my beloved dogs deprived of theirhunting, and my bow eaten up by worms.”132 Thus, not only was there a con-tinuity in the social pursuits of the upper stratum of the Early Byzantine hi-erarchy, but also continuity of the Roman concept of virtus. In the same waythat hunting scenes on the mosaic pavements of a villa glorified the activi-ties of the villa’s lay owner, so too, on church floors, were the ecclesiasticalpatrons celebrated. Such iconographic themes could, moreover, have beenviewed symbolically.

We have demonstrated above that generic hunting scenes of the Romanperiod derived in great part from ancient mythological representations.Through time the symbolic value of such scenes increased. Such symbolismmay be traced back to the Hellenistic world in which the victorious hunter wasassociated with the image of the triumphant prince rising in a majestic atti-tude on his rearing horse, having overthrown the wild animal at his feet. Levihas suggested that an esoteric interpretation of this combat developed withsubsequent variations of the artistic motifs. The Battle between the prince andhis enemies - wild animals - could be viewed symbolically as the struggle andvictory over passions (notably intemperance), thus as the Victory of Good overEvil, or more generally, as an allegory of human life itself.133 Such allegoriesappear to fit particularly well the iconography of the inhabited scroll.

Let us take for example the idea of the valiant prince. As suggestedabove, an ideological continuity which manifested itself in church pave-ments linked together the local élite and the State with the concept of agri-cultural and spiritual renewal. In a similar fashion it is not difficult toenvisage that the concept of the “valiant prince” could be applied to thereligious sphere, as evoking and symbolising the protection afforded by theruling classes of City and State. Before developing further the notions ofreligious symbolism, however, it might prove instructive to examine thehunting scene in association with the third main type of iconographic cat-egory encountered in the inhabited scroll pavement.

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The pastoral scene

The origins of pastoral scenes were traced back above to the idyllic-pas-toral repertory of Hellenistic art whilst also reflecting the realities ofRoman rural life. Indeed, there is a large body of evidence for pastoralsubsistence in the Roman period.134 It has been rightly argued, however,that in the Christian period pastoral scenes took on an increasingly sym-bolical meaning. Oakeshott, for example, has explained the recurringscenes of twelve sheep in the Italian churches of Rome and Ravenna assymbolising the Twelve Apostles - Christ’s flock.135 Levi has drawn at-tention to the frequency of depiction of pastoral scenes (often locatedbeneath the busts of the dead) on sarcophagi, contending plausibly thatthis was connected with the “Good Shepherd.”136 Pastoral scenes of thekind commonly encountered on the ecclesiastical pavements of Arabia andPalestine in the Early Byzantine period may be viewed as more specifi-cally evoking Psalm 23, whose first two lines read “The Lord is my shep-herd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in greenpastures…”137 Pastoral scenes could also be regarded as referring to John10:11: “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” It is worthstressing Maguire’s observation that Gregory of Nazianzus in the EarlyByzantine period wrote of Christ: “He is ‘shepherd’ as the leader of hisflock… He is ‘sheep’ as the sacrificial victim.”138 While this kind of sym-bolism may be an appropriate explanation for pastoral scenes in the ec-clesiastical context, we suggest below that perhaps a second strand ofsymbolical meaning is latent in the pastoral scene - one which should beconsidered as part of an overriding theme together with arable and hunt-ing scenes.

134. B. Rosen - I. Finkelstein, “Subsistence Patterns, Carrying Capacity and SettlementOscillations in the Negev Highlands”, PEQ 124 (1992) 42-58.

135. Oakeshott, The Mosaics of Rome, 68.

136. The development of pastoral scenes from the Hellenistic-idyllic repertory into Chris-tian symbolism has been examined by Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, I, 250-253.

137. Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 12. Source, Gregory of Nazianzus, Homilia XXX (FourthTheological Oration), 21, in P. Gallay - M. Jourjon (eds. and trans.), Grégoire de Nazianze,Discours 27-31 (Discours Théologiques) (Sources chrétiennes, CCL), Paris 1978.

138. This violent/idyllic dichotomy is apparent in a number of ecclesiastical examples inthe Levant, for example, the Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius (Fig. 6), theChurch of St George (Fig. 3), the Monastery of Lady Mary, the Upper Chapel of the PriestJohn (Fig. 5), Horvat Be‘er-shema and Qabr Hiram in Phoenicia (Fig. 10).


Arable, hunting and pastoral scenes as an overriding theme

Arable, hunting and pastoral scenes combined to represent an idyllic/vio-lent dichotomy. A similar association has been argued above in the case ofseveral villa pavements of Early Byzantine Arabia and Palestine. This lineof argument may also be applied to 6th century churches in the same prov-inces.139 Let us examine again, scene-by-scene, the iconography of the navefield of the Church of the Deacon Thomas (Fig. 4): a hunter combats abear; a man is engaged in the activity of pomegranate harvesting; a fox eatsgrapes from a basket; a hound pursues a gazelle; a lone hare runs, perhapsin flight from a lion which has just been shot by a hunter’s arrow; avintaging scene; a tiger confronts a shepherd minding his goat; a pastoralscene; a gazelle flees from a lion, pursued by a hunter; and finally, twopanthers on either side of a kantharos.

A similar pattern is discernible in the field of the mosaic of the mainhall at El-Hammam, Bet Shean (Fig. 9). The scenes depicted are: a pasto-ral scene; a basket of fruit; two birds and three goblets; a bird juxtaposedwith a vintaging scene; a boar speared by a hunter; a hare; a bear chasestwo gazelles; scenes of birds and a fruit basket; a boar hunt; a vintagingscene; birds and a sheep; a dog chasing a hare; several idyllic scenes; andfinally scenes of fowling. In short, this idyllic/violent iconographic relation-ship is a recurring theme in the inhabited rinceau pavement of ecclesiasti-cal buildings in 6th century Arabia and Palestine, and may well represent,in part, a continuity of the traditional allegories of virtus which were mani-fest in Roman art. These allegories seem to fit the iconography of the in-habited scroll examples particularly well. It is, however, intriguing thatsuch iconographic subject matter should decorate religious buildings. But,are the virtues of maintaining a morally correct life, controlling passions,as well as the struggle and triumph of Good over Evil not particularly ap-propriate Christian ideals? Such iconography was thus fully compatiblewith Christianity.

Indeed, several interpretations which embrace the idyllic/violent rela-tionship as part of an overriding theme have been put forward for both thesecular and religious contexts in the Early Byzantine period. J. Trilling, forexample, has viewed the iconography of the Great Palace pavement in astructuralist fashion.140 The subject matter is seen by him as consisting of

139. A thorough interpretation of the Great Palace pavement is presented by Trilling, “TheSoul of the Empire”, 27-72.

140. Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 67-72.

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three main categories: rural or idyllic life, animal violence, and protection.In particular, he noted that there is no peaceful or idyllic scene near whicha scene of violence is not to be found. Trilling draws attention to the factthat in the Graeco-Roman world simple rural life was considered morallysuperior to life in the cities. Thus, the subject matter of the Great Palacepavement offers a picture of humanity at its best and most innocent. Inshort, Trilling suggests that the symbolism of this pavement may beequated with the kind of symbolism which was shown above to have de-veloped from Hellenistic art. In other words, the subject matter conveys tothe viewer that life is potentially overshadowed by the threat of violenceand disruption. Thus, the iconography allegorically emphasizes the protec-tion against external forces, as well as the need to maintain eternal vigi-lance against passions, and is symbolical of the struggle and triumph ofGood over Evil.

Maguire has applied the principle of an overriding theme to the iconog-raphy of the Mount Nebo pavements, which is regarded as essentially two-fold.141 At first, Maguire embraces A. Grabar’s interpretation of the imageryon these floors as portrayals of the Lord’s estate, paralleling them to thehunting, agricultural, and pastoral scenes of the late Roman villae of thelanded aristocracy.142 In other words, viewed from this perspective, themosaics at Khirbet el-Mukhayyat appear to represent the whole earth asGod’s domain. More specifically though, Maguire suggests that a themeembodied in these mosaics relates to the toil of the villagers which is re-corded by an inscription in the Church of St George. This theme is regardedas representing the dominion of Mankind over beasts, of which, he sug-gests, there are two aspects, in the depictions of humans combating ani-mals, and in the portrayals of domestic animals (such as the dog) whosenatural defences Mankind uses for its own purposes. Maguire supports fur-ther this idea by pointing out that Gregory of Nyssa143 and JohnChrysostom stated in their sermons that God, in his Providence, made sa-vage beasts fearful to Man after the Fall; yet, by the exercise of his reason,Man can arm himself against them and defend himself. On the other hand,God delivered domestic beasts to Man’s power, in order to help him withthe labours to which Humanity was condemned as the consequence of Ad-am’s sin.

141. A. Grabar, “Recherches sur les sources juives de l’art paléochrétien, II”, CahiersArchéologiques 12 (1962) 115-152.

142. Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio (PG XLIV, cols 140-144).

143. John Chrysostom, In Genesim, Homilia IX (PG LIII, cols 77-80).


Campbell’s suggestion should also be considered, whereby a numberof Early Byzantine church pavements could be interpreted as a variation ofthe following passage from Isaiah 11:6-8: “Then the wolf shall live withthe sheep, and the leopard lie down with the kid; the calf and the younglion shall grow up together and a little child shall lead them; the cow andthe bear shall be friends and their young shall lie down together. The lionshall eat straw like cattle; the infant shall play over the hole of the cobra,and the young child dance over the viper’s nest.”144 Thus, several permuta-tions of meaning may be applied to the idyllic/violent relationship whichcharacterized the Early Byzantine ecclesiastical pavements of Arabia andPalestine.

Pagan-Christian, secular-religious, allegorical-mythological, idyllic-vio-lent: the resolution of contraries

At the onset of this paper a significant trend was noted. This amounted toan iconographic dichotomy between religious buildings which often con-tained inhabited vine rinceau pavements, and villae which frequently ex-hibited mythological scenes. While forming the interpretative frameworkfor the remainder of the present article, this significant new conclusionprompted the fundamental question of whether a context-specific secularand religious meaning was present in the decoration of 6th century floormosaics in the Provinces of Arabia and Palestine.

In order to gain an insight into the possible meaning of secular and re-ligious floor decoration in the Early Byzantine period, it seemed desirableat first to trace the significance of floor iconography in the Roman period.Several components of floor iconography were examined, notably the de-velopment of the inhabited acanthus and vine rinceau, the development ofstyle and floor composition, as well as the various categories of iconogra-phy within the scrolls, such as arable scenes, agricultural personifications,hunting scenes, pastoral scenes and mythological scenes. As regards mean-ing, an allegorical explanation was put forward for the various kinds ofpersonifications displayed by Roman pavements. We suggested that theDionysiac repertory had a twofold significance. On the one hand, it merelyserved a decorative function, and on the other, it had a religious meaning.

144. S. Campbell, “The Peaceful Kingdom: a Liturgical Interpretation”, in Ling (ed.), FifthInternational Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplemen-tary Series 9, Part 2 (1995) 125-134, fig. 1.

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The vine and vintaging scene were inextricably linked with the Dionysiacscene and thus fulfilled both a decorative and a symbolical function. Thepastoral scene, on the other hand, developed from the idyllic-pastoral rep-ertory of Hellenistic art and came to reflect a rural activity on the villa es-tate, as did the hunting scene. The latter’s origin, however, wasmythological, but like the pastoral scene it assumed a symbolical rôle, inthis particular case embodying the virtus and prestige of the villa patron.The various rural and hunting scenes could, moreover, be juxtaposed toportray an idyllic/violent relationship which itself had symbolical connota-tions.

An explanation for the presence of pagan themes, particularly thoseassociated with the Dionysiac repertory, in the villae of Christian patronswas put forward and two possible lines of investigation were explored. Onewas that mythological scenes may have represented a return to Classicismin art during the reign of Emperor Justinian (527-565); the other, thatmythological scenes may have taken on a new meaning. The first possibil-ity was dismissed for reasons explained in detail. It was, however, con-tended that mythological scenes in the villa context of the Early Byzantineperiod essentially took on a new significance which was appropriate to theconvictions of the patron. Thus Dionysiac scenes are explicable as secularcounterparts of vintage scenes. The characteristic juxtaposition of idyllicand violent scenes, noted in the pavements of the Roman villa, was alsoobserved in the villa context of the Early Byzantine period.

The significance of inhabited scroll iconography in the Early Byzan-tine ecclesiastical sphere was also addressed. The various personifications,such as Gê, the Four Seasons, and the Labours of the Months, appear tohave maintained their allegorical significance which they had inheritedfrom the Roman period, thus bearing witness to a continuity of meaning.

As regards the significance of the vine rinceau and the vintaging scene,these appear to have been an essentially religious theme which evolvedfrom a fundamentally pagan to Christian symbolism. The depiction of con-temporary technology amid vintaging scenes lends support to the idea thata descriptive meaning also seems likely.

The hunting scene depicted on the Early Byzantine ecclesiastical floorsappear to have perpetuated symbolism stemming from the Roman period.In essence, hunting scenes in churches were viewed as an expression of thepatron’s prestige and virtus. A symbolical explanation for the pastoral scenein ecclesiastical buildings was also suggested, one which had specificallyappropriated a Biblical significance. The occurrence of hunting, pastoraland vintaging scenes might also be viewed as part of an overriding theme


that embodied an idyllic/violent relationship of the kind noted in the pave-ments of the Roman period. Three possible permutations of meaning weresuggested. The first emphasized the protection against external forces, thecontrolling of passions, and the triumph of Good over Evil. Secondly, thesethemes represented the dominion of Mankind over animals. Thirdly, thevarious categories of iconography may be interpreted as a variation onIsaiah 2:6-8.

The various permutations of meaning which may be applied to the idyl-lic/violent iconographic relationships present in inhabited vine rinceaupavements guards against an attempt to apply a definitive interpretation tothis kind of decorative programme. Moreover, it is clear that the individualcategories themselves carried their own symbolical connotations, thus fur-ther complicating interpretation. However, the methodology applied in thispaper does permit an understanding of the various kinds of significances atplay in the iconography concerned. These are revealed by an understand-ing of the evolutionary processes of the iconography itself throughout theRoman and Early Byzantine periods, the quintessence of which can besummarised as follows.

The rinceau underwent stylistic changes from a free realistic to ageometricized abstract rendition. This was paralleled by changes in floorcomposition from three-dimensional realism to two-dimensional abstract-ness, and a tendency to render figures in a more linear fashion as opposedto their depiction in the round. However, throughout the Roman and EarlyByzantine periods, the various iconographic categories, such as agriculturalpersonifications, and arable, hunting, pastoral and mythological scenes, re-mained identical for mosaic floors. Thus, there was a continuity of icono-graphic form. This was paralleled by ideological continuity, since it is clearthat a number of iconographic categories, such as the Four Seasons, thehunting scene, and the arable-hunting-pastoral combination, continued toconvey an ideological message. A change in significance is, however, dis-cernible from the pagan to the Christian realm. It was this continuity ofform, on the one hand, and change of significance, on the other, which cre-ated an artistic tension. In the secular context, where Dionysiac scenes weredepicted, this tension was perhaps resolved by a continuity in the religiousassociations of wine. In the religious sphere, however, it seems that morewas needed to strip the pavements of their pagan antecedents, since paganmythological connotations were uprooted by the geometricization of thevine rinceau itself and by its inherent religious symbolism.

The inhabited scroll pavements of the 6th century have been describedas carpets, since, with their all-over pattern, they are reminiscent both of

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carpets and textiles. It could perhaps be argued that inhabited scroll pave-ments also resemble textiles in an interpretative way, since the key to theunderstanding of their inherent iconography is to regard them as a tapestrywith multiple strands of meaning which have to be weaved together in or-der to gain an insight into the overall iconographic programme.

Mark W. MerronySomerville College, University of Oxford