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scenes are found in the mid-5th- to early 6thcentury
mosaic pavement fields at wealthy villas at
Antioch and Apamea. The Megalopsychia Hunt
mosaic from the Yakto Complex at Daphne and
the so called ‘Worcester Hunt’ from Antioch show
hunters attacking and fighting beasts, as well as
animal combat (figs. VII-7,8). A series of scenes
of mounted hunters and hunters on foot with
spears and bows attacking beasts also appear on
the ‘Triclinos building’ from a house at Apamea
(Levi 1971, I: 325-345, 363, figs. 136, 151; pls.
LXXV-LXXX; Lavin 1963: 187-189, figs. 2,6,7;
Roussin 1985: 254-260; Dunbabin 1999: 180-184,
figs. 194, 196).
The hunting scenes occur on inhabited vine
or acanthus scrolls in which the human hunter
is in one medallion and the pursued animal in
another. An exception is in the Beth She"an Monastery
Room L, where the scene appears in one
framed medallion. Hunting scenes also appear in
free composition carpets or in friezes on mosaic
borders. Almost all of them show a pair of combatants,
the hunter on the left facing the animal
on the right.
The hunting scenes are presented in this order:
combat between a hunter on foot with spear or
lance attacks a lion, bear or bull; a hunter-soldier
on foot armed with spear and shield; a mounted
hunter, an archer, and a mounted archer.
Combat Between a Hunter with Spear or Lance and
a Beast
In these scenes a hunter on the left attacks a beast
on the right. The hunter’s pose in all these episodes
is almost the same (pl. VII.11): usually he
wears a short tunic, sometimes with its lower part
decorated with two orbiculi. His face is at times
frontal but usually he looks at the beast he is attacking.
He is armed with a lance, which he holds
in both hands; he is in motion, turning towards the
beast with his left leg bent, and is usually barefoot.
The beast is portrayed ready to leap.
A hunter stabbing a leaping tiger or leopard
is shown in what remains at el-Hammam in two
medallions in row 6; and another hunter armed
with a spear attacks a leaping wild boar in two
medallions in row 4 (Avi-Yonah 1936: 14-15
pl. XVII, 2, 5). An interesting scene in row 3
at el-Hammam shows a figure holding a club in
his right hand and perhaps a shield in his left,
though Avi-Yonah believes his left arm is covered
by a red cloth. He maintains that the animal (in
iconographic aspects of rural life 163
the next medallion) is a huge mastiff, although it
looks like a lion, chasing two sheep. In the Beth
She"an Monastery Room L two hunters confronting
beasts are apparently portrayed in two very
damaged medallions (2 and 3) in the top row
(fig. VI-13). The hunter in the second medallion,
wearing a fluttering cape, attacks a beast, which
has not survived; another hunter may originally
have been in the third medallion. On the mosaic
border in the nave at el- Maqerqesh at Beth
Guvrin two hunters wearing tunic and chlamys
streaming out behind them are armed with spears.
One attacks a bear, the other a beast that has not
survived. They are portrayed on a wavy ground
(Vincent 1922: fig. 3, pl. IX,6; Avi-Yonah 1981:
293, no. 23, pl. 49). A hunter wearing a tunic and
a chlamys flying behind his back, armed a spear
and attacking a lion is found in two inhabited
acanthus scrolls of an upper room border mosaic
in Tiberias (Area B, next to the Byzantine city wall
on Mt. Berenice, dated to the late 6th century;
Ben Arieh 1995: 37, fig. 44, pl. III; Amir 2004:
141-148, figs. 8. 15-16; colour pl. I: 4).
Naked hunters (putti) in motion spear lions and
leopards in the medallion of the acanthus rinceau
border band in the Byzantine church of Nahariya
(Dauphine and Edelstein 1984: pls. 28, 31, volutes
37-38, 42-43; 1993: 51-2). The classical style here
is paralleled according to the excavators in two
Phoenician mosaic pavements: in the Church of
St. Christopher at Qabr Hiram (575) and in the
Jenah villa in the Tyre area.
Mosaics in Jordan show several similar hunting
scenes (pl. VII-11d-g): a hunter dressed in a short
tunic decorated with two orbiculi and armed with a
lance battles a rearing lion in the top row on the
lower mosaic of the Old Diakonikon Baptistry at
the Memorial of Moses on Mt. Nebo (530) (Piccirillo
1993: 146, figs. 166-169, 182). A hunter
(inscribed by the name Stephanos) strikes a lion
with a spear; hunter and lion are each in a separate
medallion of a vine rinceau at the Church
of the Deacon Thomas at #Uyun Musa on Mt.
Nebo (Piccirillo 1993: 187, figs. 252, 263, 269). A
hunter spearing a lion is seen in two medallions
of an acanthus rinceau border at the Chapel of
the Martyr Theodore in the Cathedral at Madaba
(Piccirillo 1993: 78, 117, figs. 37, 49, 50,101). A
hunter and a bear fighting, each in a medallion,
are seen on a vine inhabited scroll mosaic at the
Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius
at Mukhayyat on Mt. Nebo (Saller and Bagatti
1949: 58, fig. 7, pl. 16,1; Piccirillo 1993: 164-5,