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to have grapes of both styles (pl. VI.18j, m).
The vine medallions and the figures at the
Hazor-Ashdod, Ma#on, and Shellal mosaics are
characteristically shown in a stylized and flat fashion.
The artists at Ma#on exhibit a keen sense
of humour, for example, the hen laying an egg
(pl. VI.19a), the depiction of the hunting dog, the
elephants, and the leopard cub playing outside
the leopard medallion. By contrast, the images
in the mosaics of Gaza, Be"er Shem#a, el-Hammam,
and Sts. Lot and Procopius are portrayed
in the ‘Justinian Renaissance’ style (Kitzinger
1976). A revival style with secular iconography,
it is characterized by striking changes in the style
of the figures with the illusion of supple movement,
the animals moving outside their frames, a
three-dimensional description, and an interest in
anatomical details. The rendition of the animals
is sometimes impressionistic and sometimes realistic,
with quite natural and lively poses. A group
of wild and domestic animals depicted on the
Be"er-Shem#a, Shellal and Petra mosaics appear
calmly standing with an inclined (lowered or bent)
head, in a position of compliance and tameness
(pl. VI.20). This posture of docility is also characteristic
of the animals depicted on the David
-Orpheus mosaic at the Gaza synagogue and the
Jabaliyah diakonikon pavement (pl. XII.3b,c).
The spaces between the scrolls on the mosaics
are filled with bunches of grapes and vine leaves
in accordance with the characteristic horror vacui.
But space between the scrolls filled by animals,
especially birds, is a phenomenon distinctive of
some of the mosaics of Israel (see Tables VI-1-2).
The inhabited scrolls mosaic of Hazor-Ashdod
shows birds filling the spaces between the three
surviving rows; at Be"er Shem#a two birds are
set between the central medallions of rows 2 and
3, and another couple of birds appear between
the central medallions of rows 6 and 7. At the
Beth She"an synagogue birds are depicted in the
spaces around the medallion of the menorah. The
spaces between all the scrolls of Room L of the
Monastery of Lady Mary at Beth She"an are filled
with animals and birds. At el-Hammam two birds
appear between the central medallions of rows
4 and 5. A sole example in Arabia appears on
the mosaic of Elias, Maria, and Soreg at Gerasa;
a pair of birds are shown in the space flanking
the tree medallion and another bird is rendered
between the four upper medallions on the left.
The figures with parts outside the medallion are
the ‘inhabited scrolls’ mosaic pavements 143
not a chronological indication (as suggested by
Talgam 1998: 80), nor are the images placed outside
between the medallions.
C. Origin, Development, and Interpretation
The origin of the vine-trellis on mosaic pavements
is a reflection on the floor of an overhead pergola.
This type of mosaic was developed in Roman
North Africa in the 2nd-3rd centuries, depicting
Cupids in vintage scenes (Avi-Yonah 1936:
19). The composition is rendered with the trellises
represented naturalistically all over the floor,
sometimes forming circular scrolls, and growing
from its four corners (see Oudna, the villa of the
Laberii; Lavin 1963: 221, fig. 55; Kondoleon
1995: 235-242,252, figs. 150, 153). The mosaic
pavements of group V seem to follow this early
tradition. Levi (1947, I: 509) maintains that the
origin of the earlier arrangement of the motif with
four corner amphorae was in imitation of a real
arbor: ‘The vine-trellis is conceived, obviously, as
formed with shoots climbing up along the four
pilasters in the corners’. In the early 4th century
a transitional type appears on the wall mosaic of
Santa Constanza in Rome. The diagonal vine
design had a tradition in North African mosaics
in examples found before the 4th century at Cherchel-Caesarea
and ‘Maison Byzantine’ at Sousse
and elsewhere (Dauphin 1987: 189, figs. 11, 15).
The fully developed Byzantine type appears in
the first half of the 5th century, consisting of the
central amphora flanked by birds, usually peacocks,
from which issue vine trellises that develop
into symmetrical scrolls. An interesting comparable
pavement is found at the Justinian church
at Sabratha (Ward Perkins and Goodchild 1953:
pl. XXVI) comprising a design of vine branches
issuing from a stylized acanthus leaf inhabited by
a great number of birds. The four central oval
medallions connected by rings are inhabited by a
bird-in-cage and a large peacock with a spread tail
in the upper medallion. Avi-Yonah (1936: 19-20)
suggests that the similar type of mosaic laid in
the 6th century in Africa, Italy, Palaestina, and
Syria evolved under the ‘Justinian Renaissance’,
probably radiating from a single centre, the imperial
court at Constantinople (see also Hunt 1994:
115-119; Balty 1995: 118-121). Trilling (1985:
33-37) argues that the inhabited scrolls mosaics
‘confirm the principles of the medallion style—