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pavements of the 6th -century tomb chamber
at El Hammam, also in Beth-She"an. The El-
Hammam narthex pavement contains a panel
depicting representations of the twelve months,
arranged in two groups of six. There was probably
a space between the two groups, which originally
contained either an inscription or perhaps the
figures of the Sun and the Moon. (pl. VIII.3a;
fig. VI-14).
Avi-Yonah (1936: 29-30) claims that the Monastery
pavement was the work of a local artist who
tried to imitate the foreign master who executed
the funerary chamber mosaic at El Hammam
(which he dates to 530). 4 He further contends that
there were two apprentices who completed the
details of the mosaic, inserting their own mannerisms,
one on the eastern part and one on the
western part (1936: 16, 30). The one who worked
on the eastern part of the El-Hammam mosaic
was the artist, perhaps the monk Elias (whose
inscription was found in the monastery), who later
laid the pavements of the Monastery.
However, it seems that the resemblance
between the pavements of the Monastery and El
Hammam is more in subject matter than in style
and execution. Although the themes in the two
are similar—a calendar with the twelve months
and the inhabited scrolls composition, the general
designs are completely different, as are the two
pavements’ styles; nor are the figures, animals,
and birds alike in their details.
The Gaza Workshop
The style, execution of details, schematic form of
the two mosaics of the Gaza-Maiumas synagogue
and the two mosaic pavements of the Diakonikon
chapel of the Byzantine Church near Jabaliyah
(Gaza region) provide evidence that these
mosaics were composed by the same artist/s or
workshop.
Two mosaic compositions survived at the
Gaza-Maiumas synagogue (Avi-Yonah 1981b:
389; Ovadiah 1969). On a section of the western
end of the pavement in the central nave is a
fragmentary representation of King David as a
musician, identified by the inscribed name דיוד
David in Hebrew (pl. IV-3). His figure in frontal
4 Saller and Bagatti (1949: 132) suggest that Avi-Yonah’s
earlier date for the El-Hammam mosaic than the Monastery
mosaic, on stylistic grounds alone, as unconvincing.
chapter twelve
posture is rendered in the recognized iconographical
manner of Orpheus. He appears wearing a
royal costume, crowned with a diadem and a
nimbus over his head . David sits on a decorated
box-like throne and plays the cithara, which is
placed to his right on a cushion positioned on
the throne. To the king’s right only a lioness,
the head and neck of a giraffe and an elephant
trunk or a serpent, listening to the music, are
preserved. David’s sitting posture and the way
he plays the instrument is similar in many of the
Orpheus mosaics.
The mosaic in the synagogue’s southernmost
aisle renders the inhabited vine scroll design,
consisting of three columns and at least eleven
rows of medallions, dated by inscription to 507/8
(pl. VI.1; fig. VI-1). The design is composed of
alternating rows of animals and birds, and some
objects in the central column. Most medallions
contain beasts and birds; the arrangement is of
three animals in the medallions of each row, connected
horizontally, especially the three animal
chase scenes. In the other rows a pair of the same
animals facing each other in a heraldic composition
flank either a bird or a beast depicted in the
centre. The central axial column shows no objects
except a bird-cage and a commemorating Greek
inscription in the axial column flanked by a pair
of peacocks.
Two different artists for the two Gaza synagogue
mosaics, are posited by Barash (1980:
29-33) the David-Orpheus and the inhabited
vine scrolls. He maintains that the executions
of the pavements differ in subject matter, style,
technique, and quality. Barash compares David
wearing the crown and robes to the Byzantine
emperor, representing the combined musical and
royal attributes. He sees a relation to the tradition
of the lost 6th-century model of the Vatican
cosmas (Barash 1980: fig. 20, only the seat is perhaps
similar). He further likens the David mosaic
to the mosaics in the Great Palace at Constantinople
in its arrangement of figure and animals, its
colourist effects, and its classical qualities of the
Justinian Renaissance; these proliferated down
the coastal regions of Syria and Antioch. Barash
concludes that the inhabited scrolls mosaic design,
having several comparable contemporary mosaics,
was created by a local workshop; whereas he
suggests, without any evidence, that the David
mosaic with its high quality and technique was
done by a foreign artist, a travelling mosaicist of
a superior class ‘who may have had some special