Fabled 1,700-Year-Old Lod Mosaic Goes on Display

Image by Israel Antiquities Authority

By JTA November 17, 2015

A 1,700-year-old mosaic unearthed in the summer of 2014 — adjacent to the site where a world-famous mosaic was unearthed in Israel — is going on display for the first time.

While excavating during construction of a permanent home and visitors center for the Lod Mosaic, which was found during highway construction in central Israel in 1996, archaeologists unearthed another mosaic, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced in a news release Monday. The new mosaic will go on display this week at the site where it was unearthed in Lod, near Tel Aviv.

The Lod Mosaic, which is notable for the quality of workmanship and state of preservation, has been exhibited at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hermitage, Louvre and other major museums. It was originally the living room floor inside a Roman villa. The newly found mosaic, which is 36-by-42 feet, served as the courtyard pavement of the same villa.

According to Amir Gorzalczany, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the villa dates from the Roman and Byzantine periods, when Lod was called Diospolis.

The complex included a magnificent large courtyard that was paved with a mosaic and surrounded by porticos.

The scenes in the mosaic that were uncovered last year depict hunting and hunted animals, fish, flowers in baskets, vases and birds, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The Lod Mosaic can be seen at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami, from February 10 through May 15, 2016.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO