House of the Rams' Heads Floor Mosaic

Datelate 400s or early 500s century C.E.

Mediummarble and limestone tesserae

DimensionsOverall: 76.2 × 208.3 cm (30 × 82 in.)
Weight: 463 lb.

ClassificationsMosaics

Credit LineExcavation of Antioch and Vicinity funded by the bequests of the Reverend Dr. Austin S. Garver and Sarah C. Garver

Terms

Object number1936.33

Label TextThis is one of four extant parts of an elaborate wide border that presumably framed a large central panel now lost (see Kondoleon catalogue, p. 134). The design is made up of the repeated motif of two confronted rams' heads (actually the foreparts or protomes of the rams) set on a pair of open wings with gray ribbons fluttering below. The ram's heads are mainly in shades of yellow, ranging from dark to light, with some white and flesh-colored tesserae as well; their horns are of light and dark gray, indicating striations, and the horns of every second pair of rams are outlined in black; they wear red collars. Red-pink roses with gray stems punctuate the spaces between the confronted rams' heads and again between the pairs. Only the part now at the Baltimore Museum of Art preserves the outer band of a lush foliate scroll of vine and acanthus leaves filled with fruit, erotes, and animals. Several features of the design have led scholars to connect this mosaic and a related pavement found on the upper level of the House of the Phoenix, also from Daphne and today in the Louvre (see Kondoleon catalogue p. 134, fig. 2) to Sasanian art (*1). The motifs of wings with a fluttering ribbon and ram protomes above wings, distinctive to Persian art, are found on the textiles, rock carvings, seals and metalwork of the Sasanian period (*2). The juxtaposition of the borders featuring rams' protomes and the two stucco pieces decorated with rams in WAM's Antioch exhibition (cat. Nos.21 and 22) reflects the close correspondence between the Antioch mosaics and Sasanian art, but the path of transmission remains unclear. Although the individual components of the border are distinctly Sasanian, their specific use is not. In Sasanian art the protome motifs appear either singly, as in the case of the Worcester pattern block, or in pairs rising from a shared base, though almost always facing outward, stressing their more abstract and ornamental aspect (*3). Can the confronted Antiochene version of the motif be an illustration of the innate naturalistic tendencies of Hellenistic-Roman art? Since there is evidence for the borrowing of Greco-Roman artistic vocabulary, especially in Sasanian metalwork, we might assume that Antiochene workshops had a reciprocal interest in Sasanian motifs. The two Daphne borders demonstrate such an interest. Undoubtedly, motifs and designs were carried through the exchange of portable arts, most likely coins, textiles, and metalwork. ProvenanceExcavation of Antioch; Found in a villa destroyed in earthquake of 526. Daphne-Harbiye, Sector 16-N, 1934

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