Mosaic Floor Discovered in Amphipolis Tomb
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
AMPHIPOLIS, GREECE—A late fourth-century B.C. floor mosaic depicting Hermes, the Greek god of travel and a guide to the underworld, and a chariot in motion, has been uncovered in what is thought to be the antechamber to the main burial at the Macedonian tomb in Amphipolis. “The chariot is pulled by two white horses and driven by a bearded man wearing a laurel wreath on his head,” Greece’s Ministry of Culture announced in a press release reported by Discovery News. Part of the center mosaic, which is made up of white, black, gray, blue, red, and yellow pebbles, is missing, but enough fragments remain to reconstruct a large part of it. The image is framed by a wide border with a double meander, squares, and spiral shapes. To read more about Hellenistic mosaics, see ARCHAEOLOGY's "Zeugma After the Flood."
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