300px, The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina. The Palestrina Mosaic or Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a late

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

floor

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

depicting the

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest ...

in its passage from the

Blue Nile The Blue Nile (; ) is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It travels for approximately through Ethiopia and Sudan. Along with the White Nile, it is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile and supplies about 85.6% of the water to ...

to the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

. The mosaic was part of a Classical sanctuary-grotto in

Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pre ...

, a town east of

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

, in central Italy. It has a width of 5.85 metres and a height of 4.31 metres and provides a glimpse into the Roman fascination with ancient Egyptian exoticism in the 1st century BC, both as an early manifestation of the role of Egypt in the Roman imagination and an example of the genre of "

Nilotic landscape Nilotic landscape is any artistic representation of landscapes that emulates or is inspired by the Nile river in Egypt. The term was coined to refer primarily to such landscapes created outside of Egypt, especially in the Aegean Sea, though it is ...

", with a long iconographic history in Egypt and the Aegean.

Description

The mosaic, with an arch-headed framing that identifies its original location as flooring an

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

in a grotto, features detailed depictions of Ptolemaic Greeks,

Aethiopia Ancient Aethiopia, ( gr, Αἰθιοπία, Aithiopía; also known as Ethiopia) first appears as a geographical term in classical documents in reference to the upper Nile region of Sudan, as well as certain areas south of the Sahara desert. Its ...

ns in hunting scenes, and various animals of the Nile river. It is the earliest Roman depiction of Nilotic scenes, of which several more were uncovered at Pompeii. A consensus on the dating of the work is slowly emerging. Paul G. P. Meyboom suggests a date shortly before the reign of Sulla (ca. 100 BC) and treats the mosaic as an early evidence for the spread of Egyptian cults in Italy, where

Isis Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...

was syncretised with

Fortuna Fortuna ( la, Fortūna, equivalent to the Greek goddess Tyche) is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at ...

. He believes Nilotic scenes were introduced in Rome by Demetrius the Topographer, a Greek artist from Ptolemaic Egypt active ca. 165 BC. Claire Préaux emphasises the "escapist" nature of the fantastic scenery.

History

Origins

The Nile Mosaic and its companion piece, the Fish Mosaic, were apparently still to be seen in the Italian city of

, ancient Praeneste, in the 15th century. When first noticed shortly before 1507 by Antonio Volsco, a humanist in the circle of Pomponio Leto, the mosaics were still ''in situ'' among the vestiges of Sulla's sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia. At that time the town was owned by the

Colonna The House of Colonna, also known as ''Sciarrillo'' or ''Sciarra'', is an Italian noble family, forming part of the papal nobility. It was powerful in medieval and Renaissance Rome, supplying one pope (Martin V) and many other church and politic ...

family of Rome, whose palazzo in Palestrina occupied a section of the ruins. The mosaic may have been indicated in a well-known passage in Pliny's Natural History concerning mosaic floors in Italy: Volsco added that these were "arranged in the pattern of a picture". Maurizio Calvesi, in identifying Francesco Colonna as the author of ''

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ''Hypnerotomachia Poliphili'' (; ), called in English ''Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream'' or ''The Dream of Poliphilus'', is a book said to be by Francesco Colonna. It is a famous example of an incunable (a work of early printing). The wor ...

'', identifies passages in ''Hypnerotomachia'' depending on Pliny that were enriched by direct experience of the mosaics themselves.

17th century

In the 17th century, Palestrina passed to the

Barberini family The House of Barberini are a family of the Italian nobility that rose to prominence in 17th century Rome. Their influence peaked with the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to the papal throne in 1623, as Pope Urban VIII. Their urban palace ...

, who between 1624 and 1626 removed most of the mosaic from its setting, without recording the overall composition, and, after further movements and damage, put it on exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini in Palestrina, where it remains. The mosaic was restored and repaired on numerous occasions, but careful watercolors of the sections were made for Cassiano dal Pozzo before the initial restoration in the ''opificio'' of St. Peter's. Helen Whitehouse's rediscovery of the long-lost watercolors enabled a reconstruction of the surviving segments in a more meaningful way ; Meybloom (p. 6) generally agrees with Whitehouse, except over the placing of one section. Commons has a selection of images from the Dal Pozzo copies. although much remains uncertain about the original composition. The mosaic has been a major feature of the ''Museo Nazionale Prenestino'' in the Palazzo Barberini in Palestrina since 1953.

References

Sources

*Finley, ''The Light of the Past'', 1965, p. 93. *C. Roemer, R. Matthews, ''Ancient Perspectives on Egypt'', Routledge Cavendish 2003, pp. 194ff. *Paul G. P. Meyboom, ''The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy'', Leiden:Brill 1995, pp. 80ff {{DEFAULTSORT:Nile Mosaic Of Palestrina Roman mosaics Nile Hellenistic art Ptolemaic Kingdom Marine art Animals in art Antikensammlung Berlin Archaeological discoveries in Italy Ships in art