FLOOR MOSAIC WITH ANTELOPES, C4-C5 CE. THE BRITISH MUSEUM This is another piece of British imperial spolia, dug up by Nathan Davis in 1858 and received by the British Museum the following year. It comes from a late antique domus in Roman Carthage and was probably a threshold mosaic between two rooms. Against a white background, two horned animals drink from a cantharos fountain whose waters shoot up and divide into two cascades which overflow the cantharos and fall into a square basin below. Usually the animals in similar scenes are deer, and they represent the spirit's thirst for God. In this case they're Bohor Reedbuck antelopes, which might have been found in North Africa when this mosaic was made, though now they do not appear north of the Sahara. Plants with red flowers dot the ground, perhaps poppies. Two fancy fowl, gallinules with their characteristic arched heads, fill the space over the antelopes' backs.
#MosaicMonday at the #BritishMuseum presents us with a floor #mosaic from C4-C5 CE #Carthage, where two antelopes drink from a #fountain, a #Christian metaphor for the soul's thirst for God, while a pair of #gallinules look on. #AncientBluesky 🏺
