1. CYANMAGENTAYELLOWBLACK
28 •
National
art
BEST
FLOOR
SHOW
EVER
BETTANY
HUGHES
T
hecoolofthatstonemust
have been delicious. The
heat of the Middle East­
ern sun is fierce and the
decorated floor would
have stood in a busy, lit­
tle town. Just imagine, around 300 AD,
stepping inside the home of a well-to-
do merchant in the Roman settlement
of Lydda, shaking the dust from your
cloak, slaves offering you a cup of the
finest local wine, then gasping as the
colours of the mosaic beneath your feet
glowed to life in the dusk of indoors.
Depicting sea monsters, leaping fish
and perfectly rendered wild animals
from three continents – rhino, giraffe,
an elephant and dolphins – here was a
mosaic of tens of thousands of stone
cubes. Discovered in 1996 as a highway
was being widened nine miles from Tel
Aviv, the Lod Mosaic has had archae­
ologists and the art world in ­raptures.
There is one ugly, gouged gap where a
water pipe was scored through the sur­
face in the Thirties, but apart from that
it’s near perfect: 56ft long, 30ft wide, its
survival verges on the miraculous.
It was under 5ft of dirt for 18 cen­
turies, but this superb specimen has
been painstakingly raised from the
dead – and the mammoth operation
of transporting it has now reached
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire,
tiger in pursuit; a leopard rips into a
gazelle. Blood is perfectly rendered,
dripping then pooling on the ground.
For Lydda (or Lod, to give it its origi­
nal, biblical name) had a testing his­
tory. The entire population had been
sold into slavery for failure to pay their
debts in 43 AD; the town was then des­
troyed by Romans during the Jewish
War of 66 AD. Rebuilt by Emperor
Hadrian, it grew to be a vital centre of
dyed purple cloth, the colour that made
emperors and kings but that was des­
cribed by one contemporary as ‘the
colour of congealed blood’.
The time of this mosaic was an age
of mass Christian persecutions. It is
estimated the Roman Emperor Dio­
cletian, in a single decade ordered the
massacre of 20,000 Christians.
So to St George – possibly martyred
in Lod, at the time the mosaic would
have been proudly shown off as a
new addition to a rich man’s home.
Various sources declare George was
born in Lod, that his mother
had a house there, or that Lod
was where he was killed and
then buried.
Given the date of our
mosaic – and the high-
end building in which
it was a centrepiece –
there is the tantalis­
ing chance that the
well-to-do George
walked on that very
floor. Some say his
bones were brought to
Lod from Cappadocia, in
whatisnowTurkey,asrelics.
From the 5th century a shrine at
Lod was an international focus of pil­
grimage, Byzantine rulers renaming the
town Georgiopolis.
The Lod mosaic has workmanship
normally found only in the grand cities
of the time, such as Antioch, Jerusalem
and Rome. The craftsmen were highly
skilled, almost certainly shipped in.
Inadvertently they made their own
mark: under the mosaic one worker
has left a footprint – he was wearing a
Roman sandal – next to the sketches he
was mapping out. Also, a dog, and pos­
sibly a cat, have wandered across the
delicate outlines, leaving paw prints.
The operation to preserve and trans­
port this freeze-frame of history is a
work of logistical genius. After its dis­
covery, it was hidden for 13 years and
when the team of archaeologists were
ready, the tiles were stuck on a cotton
sheet, and then sheet and mosaic were
rolled up like a giant Swiss roll, to be
unrolled for restoration.
Butwhosemosaicwasit?AChristian?
A high-flying Roman? One of the rich
Jewish community? It is a riddle that
has patiently waited millennia for us to
unravel. Already other mosaics at Lod
have been identified, protected under
the collapsed mud-brick walls of the
villa. More excavations are planned.
It is both visual treasure and histori­
cal detective story. We should all be
alert to the ancient treasures that may
be under our own feet.
waddesdon.org.uk/collection
Mainpicture:theLodmosaicin
itsentirety,and,below,details
ofitsmenagerieofbeasts
Buriedfor18
centuries,thissuperb
Romanmosaichas
beenpainstakingly
raisedfromthedead
andisnowinBritain
it’sa
Fact
Britainhasanumberof
Romanmosaicstovisit,
includingthoseatLittlecote
inWiltshire,Fishbourne
inSussex,Bradingon
theIsleofWightandat
London’sNational
Gallery.
where it can be seen until November 2.
And how appropriate that it is being
shown here – since there is the outside
whisker of a chance it is a floor upon
which England’s very own St George
once walked.
At first it looks like a pastoral scene
but the mosaic has a darker message,
and at ­ second glance you notice the
blood. A wild-eyed deer strains from
a lioness’s claws; an ox bellows in fear, a
TheLodMosaic
WaddesdonManor,Bucks
UntilNovember2
UweSteinert