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The theme of King David as Orpheus clearly
belongs to the existing iconographic affinities of
a mythological pagan Orpheus figure with attributes
of a musician and animal charmer, which
was combined with the biblical image of David
(1 Samuel 16: 23) as royal musician, poet, psalmist,
and charmer of humans and animals with
music (Hachlili 1988: 298). Gaza was an ancient
Hellenistic town with a Hellenistic-Byzantine tradition;
this may have influenced the Jewish community
to choose for their synagogue pavement
a biblical figure represented in its original pagan
mythological image. The David-Orpheus motif
was probably appropriated by Jewish iconography
from the pagan world while retaining its original
meaning of the charming of beasts by music, and
combining it with David’s royal image. David in
this composition, as the biblical psalmist king,
is represented similarly as Orpheus playing the
cithara before wild beasts.
Two mosaic pavements portraying Orpheus
were discovered in Israel: the Late Roman mosaic
at Sepphoris and the Byzantine mosaic of Orpheus
in Jerusalem.
The Orpheus Mosaic Pavement at Sepphoris
The Orpheus mosaic pavement was found in the
triclinium of a private house, adjacent to the cardo
in the lower city of Sepphoris, dated to the second
half of the 3rd century CE (Talgam and Weiss
2004: 8-10). The excavators suggest (Talgam and
Weiss 2004: 9, with no verification) that the Sepphoris
dwelling may have belonged to a Hellenized
Jew rather than a pagan resident.
The upper panel of the T-shaped mosaic in the
triclinium depicts Orpheus surrounded by birds
and animals; Orpheus is seated on a rock under
a tree, wearing a Phrygian cap, an ornamented
short Oriental tunic and trousers, the Persian
anaxirides, a red chlamys, and low boots (apparently
belonging to the Phrygian Orpheus type:
Jesnick 1997: 72). He holds an especially large
seven- stringed cithara to his left (pl. IV-4).
About twenty animals are portrayed listening
to and charmed by Orpheus and his music; the
birds are rendered in the upper part of the panel,
the animals in the lower part. Among the depicted
birds are an eagle, a peacock, and a goose; the animals
include a lion, a wild boar, a tiger, a rabbit,
a bull and a snake coiled around a tree which is
frequently part of the Orpheus scene; the snakein-tree
motif appears on other Orpheus mosaics
at Chabba, Carnuntum, Ptolemais, Seleucia,
chapter four
Tobruk, and Trento (Jesnick 1997: 81, fig. 21).
A later wall built on it destroyed the lowermost
part of the scene.
The composition is similar in character to some
3rd-4th-century Orpheus mosaics. It consists of a
unified rectangular panel, which depicts the figure
of Orpheus in the centre, with the birds and the
animals circling him in a conventional division: the
birds are on the upper section and the animals on
the lower. This design appears on other Orpheus
mosaics, such as the Orpheus mosaic pavements
at Adana, Chahba, Cos I, Lepcis Magna I, North
Syria (now at the Kestner Museum, Hannover),
Paphos, and Saragossa (Jesnick 1997: figs. 112,
113,122, 131, 133, 141).
The animals, portrayed at Sepphoris without
regard to scale and hanging in midair to form a
circle around Orpheus, are rendered attentively
listening to the musician. Their faces and bodies
are turned up towards him, in a way quite similar
to other ‘mannerist’ features on Orpheus mosaics
(Jesnick 1994; 1997: 62-64).
The Jerusalem Orpheus
The Orpheus mosaic pavement in Jerusalem (now
at the Istanbul Archeological Museum, no. 1642)
was found in 1901 in a courtyard of a Jewish
house north-west of Damascus Gate (Vincent
1901, 1902; Avi-Yonah 1932: 172-3, no. 133, pls.
50-51; Bagatti 1952; Ovadiah and Mucznik 1981;
Jesnick 1997: 16, no.73, fig. 117 and bibliography
there). The building consisted of a hall and two
rooms, with a small apse decorated with a mosaic
containing a cross at the centre; it probably served
as a funerary chapel. The Orpheus mosaic decorates
a large part of the hall’s upper register
(fig. IV-14); it is dated to the 6th century.
The oversized frontal Orpheus in the centre
of the panel is a young seated figure (without a
seat), presented frontally looking out with large
eyes (pl. IV-5a). In his left hand Orpheus holds
a multi-stringed cithara set on his left knee,
which he strums with his right hand; he wears
an embroidered chiton and a chlamys fastened
with a fibula, and a Phrygian cap, and has sandals
on his feet (Jesnick 1997: 68-71, figs. on pp.
183-189; the Jerusalem Orpheus belongs to the
Thracian Orpheus type).
Orpheus is surrounded by several animals: a
viper circles his head, confronting a mongoose,
to the right, with a leash tied around its neck; on
Orpheus’s left a lamb and a bear look backwards,