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Cyrenaican Church Floor Mosaics of the Justinianic Period: Decoration or Meaning?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Norman D. Cowell
Norman D. Cowell*
Affiliation:
2 Burford Lea, Elstead, Godalming, Surrey
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Abstract

The well-preserved church floor mosaics of the Justinianic period discovered at Qasr Libya have been dismissed as a haphazard collection of motifs, most of which are purely decorative. The author presents arguments to question this statement and carries out a re-examination to see if a symbolic programme can be recovered from them. In this task two principal sources of imagery are drawn on; bible passages and, in view of the wide variety of fauna represented, the stories in early bestiaries where the alleged behaviour of animals is given a theological interpretation. This analysis was extended to cover a selection of other church floor mosaics of similar age. In each case it has been found possible to construct a coherent programme of symbolism and to link this to rites which would have been celebrated in those locations.

Type
Articles
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 45 , November 2014 , pp. 85 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Libyan Studies 2014 

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