When was this Floor Mosaic made?
This mosaic was created as the floor of a private home in Daphne, a suburb about 9 kilometers outside of Antioch (in southern Turkey near the border with Syria), around 526-540 CE. Regular natural disasters can help pinpoint this narrow timeframe. There was a severely destructive earthquake in 526, so the location and condition of the mosaic indicates it was installed after that disaster.
This was near the beginning of what is now termed the Medieval period, which started around the mid-400s and spanned about a thousand years. When this mosaic was being created, the Roman Empire had recently fallen apart, and the Byzantine Empire replaced it, but was centered farther east in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). The Roman and Byzantine empires were similar in many ways, and the people we call Byzantine considered themselves Romans. Similar technologies and daily ways of life continued from Roman times into the Byzantine era. Religion in the Byzantine Empire was mixed, so even though Christianity was the religion of the early Byzantine Emperors (such as Justinian I who ruled 527-565), older and outside ideas, stories, and symbols mingled with those from the Byzantine culture. Both the Roman and Byzantine cultures utilized mosaics.
Maggie McCracken, Class of 2025, College of the Holy Cross
