Friday, February 09, 2007

House of Ge and the Seasons

Doro Levi in his monumental work titled Antioch Mosaic Pavements, Princeton 1945, pp. 346-7 described the mosaics found on House of Ge and the Seasons. His diagram shows four rooms. In room no. 1 there are five medallions, four of them representing the seasons. The center one representing Ge (Gaia), the Greek earth Goddess. In the second room
In the central panel of corridor 2, the round medallion within square contains a star of David formed by the interlacing triangles, one in cable and the other in guilloche

It is interesting to compare this mosaic to the one found in Villa Romana del Casale

in Sicily, where each season is contained in a hexagram of its own.

In the same book Doro Levi shows a photo of another hexagram from antioch that was found in Cilicia in room no 1. Between each two points there is a rhomb and in it a smaller rhomb. Inside the hexagram there's a hexagon and in it a circle. This hexagram mosic is part of a large pavement with many busts.

Esoteric Palace

Esoteric Palace hexagramRenaissance summerhouse built in the years 1555 – 1556 by Ferdinand I of Tirol, by his own design, in the shape of a hexagram according to cosmological ideas influenced by alchemy. In Europe similar buildings can be found, even though not frequently, only in Italy and France.

Menorah within a Star of David

Researcher Uri Ofir claims that the Magen David is part of the Tabernacle Menorah, but here it looks like the Menorah is part of the Magen David. This is what happens when you go straight ahead on the globe - soon you find out that you are in the opposite direction...
Picture is courtesy of "ibn-i batuta" who published it on Flickr.