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iconographic aspects of rural life 171
Figure VII-9. Peaceful scene of sheep around a tree and nibbling foliage: a. Kissufim, first panel; b. Jabaliyah Diakonikon
pavement.
medallions of inhabited scroll design (pl. VII.17).
Women are rare in renditions of rural activities,
but several episodes with them do appear in some
of these medallions. An extraordinary scene of
a woman kneeling and breast-feeding her child
appears in the central medallion of the row 2 on
the inhabited vine scroll mosaic in St. Stephen’s
church at Be"er Shem#a (Gazit and Lender 1993:
275, pl. XXe); she wears a decorated dress and
hat, a necklace, earrings, and bracelets. Similarly,
a woman on a chair nursing her child appears
on the mosaic pavement of the Byzantine
Great Palace in Constantinople (Trilling 1989: 70,
figs. 3, 32). A woman carrying a basket of fruit
appears in the acanthus rinceau border of the
narthex mosaic at the Beth Loya church (Patrich
and Tsafrir 1993: 266, 268). A woman carries a
fruit basket on her left shoulder and holds a knife
in her right hand in a medallion of the acanthus
rinceau nave mosaic in the Upper Chapel of the
Priest John at Mukhayyat on Mt. Nebo (Piccirillo
1993: 174, figs. 229-230). At Beth ‘Alpha a figure
holding a goose is rendered on the west border;
a hen strutting along with her four chicks behind
her is portrayed in a lozenge medallion of the top
border band.
A barefoot man with the Greek inscription
‘Victor’, wearing a tunic and carrying a plate
in both hands, is shown frontally in the central
medallion in row 10 of inhabited vine scroll