On prominent display at the Berkshire Athenaeum's ‘Herman Melville Memorial Room’ are four small pieces of coloured tile. Trivial in size, the significance of these ceramic fragments is clarified by an accompanying entry from Melville's 1856–7 journal – the diary of his travels in Greece and the Middle East. Writing under the date 6 December 1856, the American records his day spent in Thessalonica, exploring the city's antique sites:

This abrupt sketch of remembered images offers an apt place to begin consideration of Melville and Middle Eastern translation. Touring spaces which straddle two sacred histories – buildings which comprise Muslim revisions of European originals – the American is particularly attracted to a site of ‘strength’ and ‘circular[ity]’. Focusing his attention further upon its ‘ceiling mosaic’, Melville discovers this mosque-church to be not only religiously hybrid, but also dynamic in architecture, still transforming before his eyes, with ‘Pieces continually falling upon the floor’. The above entry concludes with Melville himself becoming a participant in the unfolding life of this ‘mosaic’ building; first a ‘Greek church’, then ‘turned’ by the ‘Turks’, the ‘present character’ of this shrine is translated further with Melville carrying ‘away’ fragments, bringing these synthetic memorials back across the Atlantic.