Antioch mosaics
Encyclopedia
The Antioch mosaics are a grouping of over 300 mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

 floors created around the 3rd century AD
Anno Domini
and Before Christ are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars....

, and discovered during archaeological excavations of Antioch
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...

 between 1932 and 1939 by a consortium of five museums and institutions. About half of the mosaics are housed at the Antakya Archaeological Museum
Antakya Archaeological Museum
Construction of the Antakya Archaeological Museum, the Archaeological Museum of Hatay Province of Turkey, started in 1934 on the recommendation of the French archaeologist, M. Henri Prost. It was completed in 1938. In 1939, when a plebiscite united the province of Hatay with Turkey, the museum...

, with others currently residing at the Worcester Art Museum
Worcester Art Museum
The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 35,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day, representing cultures from all over the world. The WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is the second largest art museum in New England...

, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...

, Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...

, Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum is Princeton University's gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1882, it now houses over 72,000 works of art that range from antiquity to the contemporary period...

 among others. The mosaics range in design from realistic imagery and scenes, to purely geometric patterns.

History

Antioch
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...

 was an ancient city located just outside the modern day city of Antakya
Antakya
Antakya is the seat of the Hatay Province in southern Turkey, near the border with Syria. The mayor is Lütfü Savaş.Known as Antioch in ancient times, the city has historical significance for Christianity, as it was the place where the followers of Jesus Christ were called Christians for the first...

, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

. During the reign of Hadrian
Hadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...

, during the 2nd century, through to the reign of Justinian in the 6th century, mosaic floors were the fashion in the city and its surrounding suburbs. The city thrived until it was destroyed by earthquakes in 526
526
Year 526 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Olybrius without colleague...

 and 528
528
Year 528 was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sabbatius without colleague...

.

Beginning in 1932, a consortium of museums and institutions sponsored expeditions to the archaeological sites where the city of Antioch
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...

 once stood. These museums, the Worcester Art Museum
Worcester Art Museum
The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 35,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day, representing cultures from all over the world. The WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is the second largest art museum in New England...

, Princeton University
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum is Princeton University's gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1882, it now houses over 72,000 works of art that range from antiquity to the contemporary period...

, the musée du Louvre, the Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...

, and Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

's affiliate Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks is the conventional name for the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, situated on a historic property in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The institution is administered by the Trustees for Harvard University. Its founders, Robert Woods Bliss and his wife...

, were attempting to uncover great monuments, palaces, and treasures, but were disappointed when most of what was unearthed, under tons of silt, was just the remains of houses, most without any remaining walls. The only surviving part of the majority of the houses was the floors.

The floors the archeologists discovered were covered in intricate mosaics. More than 300 mosaics were found.

In 1939 the expedition ended and the archeologists packed up to leave. They left about half of the unearthed mosaics to the city if Antakya
Antakya
Antakya is the seat of the Hatay Province in southern Turkey, near the border with Syria. The mayor is Lütfü Savaş.Known as Antioch in ancient times, the city has historical significance for Christianity, as it was the place where the followers of Jesus Christ were called Christians for the first...

, the modern day city located at Antioch, which subsequently built a museum, the Antakya Archaeological Museum
Antakya Archaeological Museum
Construction of the Antakya Archaeological Museum, the Archaeological Museum of Hatay Province of Turkey, started in 1934 on the recommendation of the French archaeologist, M. Henri Prost. It was completed in 1938. In 1939, when a plebiscite united the province of Hatay with Turkey, the museum...

, to house them. The rest of the mosaics were split up amongst the institutions that took part in the dig, and were sent all over the world. To be transported, large amounts of concrete was poured behind the mosaics to create a stable backing. When dividing up the floors, the archeologists, often took apart rooms and sent different parts of the floor to different museums. For an exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum in 2000, mosaics were compiled from Paris, Baltimore, Princeton and Wellesley, to reassemble a single room's floor. After the expedition left, the pits were filled back in and olive groves were planted over them.

Art

The Antioch mosaics were created at a time and place between distinct artistic styles. They show how the link between artistic styles of ancient Greece
Art in Ancient Greece
The arts of ancient Greece have exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries all over the world, particularly in the areas of sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models...

 and Rome
Roman art
Roman art has the visual arts made in Ancient Rome, and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Major forms of Roman art are architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work...

, and the art of early Christianity
Early Christian art and architecture
Early Christian art and architecture is the art produced by Christians or under Christian patronage from about the year 100 to about the year 500. Prior to 100 there is no surviving art that can be called Christian with absolute certainty...

. The mosaics are incredibly large, with "The Worcester Hunt," the largest Antioch mosaic in the United States, measuring 6.26 metres (20.5 ft) x 7.11 metres (23.3 ft). The mosaics range in design from realistic imagery and scenes, to purely geometric patterns. It is believed that the mosaics were created by mosaic specialists.

The Tessera
Tessera
A tessera is an individual tile in a mosaic, usually formed in the shape of a cube. It is also known as an abaciscus, abaculus, or, in Persian کاشي معرق. In antiquity, mosaics were formed from naturally colored pebbles, but by 200 BC purpose-made tesserae were being used...

 for the mosaics is both white and colored marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 as well as white and colored limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

.

See also

  • Zliten mosaic
    Zliten mosaic
    The Zliten mosaic is a Roman floor mosaic from about the 2nd century AD, found in the town of Zliten in Libya, on the east coast of Leptis Magna. The mosaic was discovered by the Italian archaeologist Salvatore Aurigemma in 1913 and is now on display at The Archaeological Museum of Tripoli...

  • Early Byzantine mosaics in the Middle East
    Early Byzantine mosaics in the Middle East
    Early Byzantine mosaics in the Middle East are a group of Christian mosaics created between the 4th and the 8th centuries in ancient Syria, Palestine and Egypt when the area belonged to the Byzantine Empire. The eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman and later the Byzantine Empires inherited a...

  • Late Antique and medieval mosaics in Italy
    Late Antique and medieval mosaics in Italy
    Italy has the richest concentration of Late Antique and medieval mosaics in the world. Although the technique is especially associated with Byzantine art, and many Italian mosaics were probably made by imported Greek-speaking artists and craftsmen, the numbers of significant mosaics remaining in...

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