Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire

Tree of Paradise

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Tree of Paradise Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire

Edward Bleiberg

Contents

Foreword

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The Discovery of the Synagogue of Hammam Lif

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Synagogue Archaeology

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The Sanctuary Mosaic

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The Synagogue in Late Antiquity

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Notes to the Text

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Chronology

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Foreword

Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire transports us to a fascinating but little-known world: the Jewish community in North Africa during Late Antiquity. The works of art on view in this exhibition reveal the connections between Jews living in the Roman colony of Naro and their pagan and Christian neighbors. Drawing on a common Roman symbolic vocabulary, artists created a mosaic floor for the Naro synagogue’s sanctuary that illustrated the community’s hopes for the world to come and its trust in God’s power.

At the core of the exhibition are twenty-one mosaics excavated from the site of the Naro synagogue, built during the Roman Empire in present-day Tunisia in the town that is now called Hammam Lif. They were discovered in 1883 by Captain Ernest de Prudhomme, while planting a garden, and were purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1905. A Latin inscription from the synagogue records that the mosaic floor, represented here by twelve surviving panels, was a gift to the synagogue from a certain Julia, a resident of Naro, in approximately 500 c.e. The other nine mosaic panels in the exhibition originated either in an earlier part of the same building or in a nearby building and were made in the first to second century c.e.

The mosaics, along with contemporaneous statues, textiles, and jewelry drawn from the Brooklyn Museum collection, allow visitors to learn about the role of the synagogue during the Roman-period Diaspora, as well as about the importance of female patrons in the ancient Jewish community, Jewish ideas of Creation and Paradise as seen in Naro, and the relationship between Christian and Jewish art in this period. The mosaics reveal a world where Jews were integrated into the general society of the province and perhaps accepted to a greater extent than previously understood. On the hundredth anniversary of the mosaics’ acquisition, the Museum takes pride in once again presenting them to the public.

I am grateful to curator Edward Bleiberg, of the Museum’s Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, for conceiving of

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Tree of Paradise and bringing it so handsomely to realization. His curatorial intelligence has guided the project throughout its development.

As always, many other members of the Museum’s staff have collaborated to produce this important exhibition and catalogue, which will engage visitors across a wide spectrum of interests while advancing the Museum’s tradition of scholarship. Special thanks go to Charles Desmarais, Richard Fazzini, Radiah Harper, Deirdre Lawrence, Kenneth Moser, and Kevin Stayton and the teams they lead. Matthew Yokobosky sensitively designed the installation. Conservators Tina March, Won Yee Ng, and Christine Giuntini worked tirelessly to prepare these ancient artifacts for exhibition.

Sarah Kraemer and Dean Brown created new digital images for publication.

James Leggio edited the catalogue with his usual flair. Harold Wortsman expertly designed the catalogue. John DiClemente carried out digital prepress functions. Dominick Prisco and Eddy Trochez printed the book in the Museum’s Print Shop. Tomoko Nakano designed the exhibition’s graphics.

And Kathy Zurek performed countless tasks that made the exhibition possible.

For the ongoing support of the Museum’s Trustees, we extend special gratitude to Robert S. Rubin, Chairman, and every member of our Board.

Without the confidence and active engagement of our Trustees, it would not be possible to initiate and maintain the high level of exhibition and publication programming exemplified by Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire.

Arnold L. Lehman Director Brooklyn Museum

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Atlantic Ocean

europe Loire River Danube River Black Sea

Tiber River ● ●

Ostia

Elche

asia

Rome ●

Stobi

Constantinople

Tigris River

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Euphrates River Antioch ●

Delos

Dura Europos

Mediterranean Sea africa

Jaffa Alexandria

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Beit Shan Jerusalem

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Cairo

Nile River Naro (Hammam Lif)

Carthage ●

Tunis ● ●

Babylon

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Map of the Mediterranean world in Late Antiquity with an inset showing the area of Hammam Lif, where the Brooklyn Museum mosaics were discovered

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The Discovery of the Synagogue of Hammam Lif

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ynagogue archaeology was born on February 17, 1883, when the French army captain Ernest de Prudhomme ordered soldiers under his command in Hammam Lif, Tunisia, to prepare part of his backyard for a garden.

Instead of planting vegetables, however, Prudhomme and his men discovered the first archaeological ruins of an ancient synagogue ever unearthed, among them the mosaics on view in this exhibition.

Eventually, synagogue archaeology would revolutionize modern understanding of ancient Jewish life and religion. In our time, scholars have come to recognize that the unrelentingly gloomy picture of Jewish life in the later Roman Empire preserved in texts must be viewed alongside a decidedly different picture created from the archaeological evidence. True, a decree of the Roman emperors Honorius (393−423 c.e.) and Theodosius II (402−450 c.e.) dating to 415 c.e. declared that Jews could build no new synagogues in the Roman Empire. And laws even prohibited repairs to old synagogue buildings. Yet archaeology demonstrates that the law was only unevenly enforced. Remains of ancient synagogues from Turkey to Spain and from Hungary to Tunisia show that many Jewish communities did in fact prosper in spite of official intolerance. Other discoveries of ancient synagogues, in modern Israel, Jordan, Syria, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Italy, reveal the vitality of Jewish life around the Mediterranean Sea during the late Roman Empire and an unexpected tolerance from non-Jewish neighbors. At least three hundred ancient synagogues are now known from archaeological remains and inscriptions.

The hundredth anniversary of the Hammam Lif synagogue mosaic’s arrival in Brooklyn in 1905 is an excellent time to try to understand the role that the Brooklyn Museum’s mosaics play in this revised picture.

The Context of Discovery Tunisia has had a long history of foreign conquerors. The Turks had ruled the country since 1574. The capital city of Tunis was under the rule of a hereditary governor, called the bey, who established practical independence from 9

the Turkish sultan under the Tunisian Muradid dynasty (1628−1705) and the following Husainid dynasty (1705− 1957). The French occupied Tunisia from 1881 until full independence in 1956. The present Republic of Tunisia abolished the monarchy in 1957.

In Captain Prudhomme’s time, Tunisia was effectively ruled by the French (Prudhomme was an officer of the occupying army), and thus French scholarship would play a key role in the original discussions of his discovery.

Prudhomme immediately recognized that the colorful stones his men had uncovered were Romanperiod mosaics. Hammam Lif, scholars would later determine, had been called “Naro” in Punic, the language of the Phoenicians, a Near Eastern people who had lived in Tunisia since 815 b.c.e., when they founded the nearby city of Carthage (Figure 1).

They created a vital, multicultural society with the indigenous Berber people. The Carthaginian Empire had clashed with Rome during the Punic Wars (264−146 b.c.e.). When the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (185−129 b.c.e.) finally defeated Carthage in 146 b.c.e., the Romans established the province they Figure 1. Obelisk-Formed Stela. From Carthage, Tunisia.

Second century b.c.e. Limestone, 37 5 ⁄ 8 x 12³⁄ 16 x 6¹⁄ 8 inches (99.5 x 31 x 15.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Hagop Kevorkian, 55.157

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called Africa, named for the Afri people who lived there, in Carthage’s former territories. Hammam Lif, the modern town name (meaning “Baths of the Point,” for the spit of land where it is located), was then known as Ad Aquae (“At the Waters”) and Aquae Persianae (“The Waters of Perseus”), where the natural hot springs were renowned as a cure for rheumatism until the nineteenth century. (It was also still known by its Punic name of Naro, which appears in an inscription on the synagogue’s floor.) Even after Rome lost direct control of the province with the invasion of North Africa by the Vandals, a Germanic tribe, in 429 c.e. and the conquest of Carthage in 439 c.e., Roman culture continued to dominate the cities there. The surviving eastern Roman state, called the Byzantine Empire, recovered rule of Tunisia in 533 c.e., only to lose it again during the Arab invasion of 648−669 c.e. Roman culture disappeared in North Africa, replaced by Islamic culture until today. Yet Tunisia remains home to some of the most spectacular ancient Roman archaeological sites anywhere.

From Tunisia to Brooklyn, 1883−1905 The Prudhomme mosaics’ history between the day of excavation and their entry into the Brooklyn Museum remains murky. When his military service ended, Prudhomme returned to France, to the city of Lyon. He took with him twenty-five ancient Roman panels of mosaic. Captain Prudhomme’s mosaics next appear in the public record when they were sold at auction in the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on March 26, 1891. Prudhomme’s estate offered twenty-five fragments for sale. Édouard Schenk of Toulouse, France, purchased twentyone of them. The other four panels offered at the Paris sale may be the four mosaics from Hammam Lif now in the Bardo Museum (formerly called the Musée Alaoui) in Tunis, Tunisia. If so, those mosaics would be the three inscriptions (Figures 2, 7, 9) and one image of a duck described in the catalogue of the Bardo prepared in 1897. An alternate possibility is that the three inscriptions and image of a duck were sent to the Bardo as early as 1883, when Prudhomme discovered them. If this is the case, the four fragments in the Paris auction not sold to Schenk are unlocated today.

In any event, the twenty-one Schenk mosaics were sold through Messieurs Rollins and Feuardent, Parisian antiquities dealers, to the Brooklyn Museum in 1905, with the archaeologist Henri de Morgan acting as agent. They included twelve panels certainly from the Hammam Lif synagogue, two more that are 11

probably from the synagogue, and seven panels perhaps from an older section of the synagogue or from nearby Roman buildings. Yet these panels do not represent the whole floor. Some of it was thought to be in the possession of the Carthage Museum as early as 1886, though these fragments cannot be located today. The fate of those other portions of the floor remains unknown.

Scholarly Interest The mosaics of Hammam Lif inspired an immediate interest in the scholarly world as well as a spirited debate on their meaning. Only one month after Prudhomme discovered them, the leading French archaeologist of the day, Gustave Schlumberger (1844–1929), visited the site and declared in a letter to the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres that the mosaics were so important to him that he felt compelled to notify other scholars of their existence immediately.

He found the mosaics “surprisingly beautiful, fresh, and well-preserved.” His letter was included in an article by the foremost classical philologist of the day, Ernest Renan (1823–1892), who also translated the three Latin inscriptions found in mosaic in the floor, for the Revue archéologique, an important French archaeological journal, within weeks of their discovery (see Figures 2, 7, 9). Renan’s article and translations, though imperfect, sketched the scope of the problems in understanding the inscriptions.

Figure 2. Asterius Inscription from Hammam Lif. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 245 ⁄ 8 x 51¼ inches (63 x 130 cm). Collection of the Bardo Museum, Tunis. Drawing created in Photoshop by John DiClemente based on an illustration in Ernest Renan, “Les mosaïques de Hammam Lif,” Revue archéologique 1 (1883), p. 162. The inscription reads: “Asterius, son of the archisynagogos, Rusticus, and his wife, Margarita, daughter of Riddeus, paved this part of the synagogue portico with mosaic.”

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Figure 3. Spoils from the Temple in Jerusalem. Relief sculpture in the passageway of the Arch of Titus, Rome, circa 81 c.e.

Marble, 6 feet 8 inches (2.03 m) high. Engraving by Josiah Wood Whymper (British, 1813–1903)

Real controversy had begun in 1883, with the visit of Father A. L. Delattre (1850–1932) to Prudhomme at the site. Delattre, a missionary priest turned archaeologist and founder of the museum on the site of ancient Carthage, believed he saw the Greek letters alpha and omega flanking one of the images of a menorah (seven-branched lamp) on the mosaic floor.

Delattre’s incorrect interpretation of the images as alpha and omega suggested to him a Christian presence in the building, since these letters often symbolized for early Christians that Jesus is “the first and the last,” just as these two letters are the first and last of the Greek alphabet.

Two Jewish scholars, David Kaufmann and Salomon Reinach, also debated whether the floor functioned in a Jewish or a Christian context, both writing in 1886 in the leading Jewish history journal of the time, Revue d’études juives (Review of Jewish Studies). Kaufmann (1852–1899), the great Hungarian scholar of Hebrew literature, argued from numerous examples that Jews and Christians in ancient times shared many symbols. These symbols included the alpha and omega (whose presence Kaufmann mistakenly accepted), the fish, the basket of bread, and the peacock, all of them images found in the floor mosaic from Hammam Lif. The one symbol Kaufmann 13

believed that ancient Jews and Christians did not share was the menorah.

Kaufmann believed, as is also understood today, that the menorah was the primary Jewish symbol in ancient times. The modern, six-pointed Jewish star called the Mogen David (literally, the “Shield of David”), was unknown until its use in eighteenth-century Prague. The menorah’s primacy as a Jewish symbol in the ancient world, ironically, was probably established through its representation on the Arch of Titus in Rome (Figure 3). There the menorah from the Second Temple of Jerusalem is depicted being carried as booty through the Roman Forum. The presence of two menorahs at Hammam Lif (Figures 14, 16) and the two inscriptions (Figures 2, 9) that described the building as a sinagoga (Latin for synagogue) confirmed for Kaufmann that the structure was indeed a Jewish building. Salomon Reinach (1858–1932), a leading art historian of the time, disagreed. He resisted the idea—now well established through hundreds of examples—that Jewish synagogues could be decorated with figural mosaics. Reinach thought the building might once have been used by Jews, but that later it was a Christian church, at which time symbols that he thought were plainly Christian were added.

Further debate on whether synagogues and churches could share the same types of floor plans could not be resolved at the time because so little evidence was then known. In modern times scholars have recognized that these building types derived from Greek and Roman building plans rather than specifically Christian or Jewish architecture.

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Synagogue Archaeology

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ynagogue archaeology has grown from a few scattered remains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into an academic discipline that has today established the outlines of the external appearance, plan, and decorative programs of synagogue buildings from ancient times around the Mediterranean Sea. Synagogue archaeology has established many facts that have come as a surprise to modern Jews and others familiar with modern Jewish customs. These facts include the continuing existence of synagogues since the time of the Second Temple of Jerusalem (536 b.c.e.–70 c.e.); the lack of a distinctive building type, though certain features were constant in synagogue plans; and the depiction of figures in decorating synagogues, in apparent disregard of the Second Commandment (against graven images) and Rabbinic strictures.

There is no agreement among scholars about the origins of the synagogue. Today a synagogue is the central institution of Jewish communal life, a place for prayer but also for many other related activities. The word usually refers also to the building where these activities take place. (In ancient times, too, synagogue referred to both the building and the community.) A papyrus dating to about 300 b.c.e. mentions the existence of a synagogue in Egypt.

This is the earliest known evidence for this institution, but some scholars believe the exiles from Jerusalem built them in Babylon after the destruction of the First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) in 586 b.c.e. By the second century b.c.e., Jews had built a synagogue on the Greek island of Delos. Synagogues existed in major cities such as Rome, Alexandria (Egypt), and Antioch (Syria) as well as in many small towns and villages throughout the Roman Empire in the first century c.e.

Both archaeology and Rabbinic texts demonstrate that ancient synagogue buildings resembled surrounding structures wherever they were, rather than exhibiting a distinctive architecture. The basic elements of Hellenistic architecture were employed to create buildings that could easily be confused with pagan temples or houses. This possible confusion is recognized in the Talmud, in the discussion of a Jew who bows toward a pagan shrine, mistaking it for a synagogue and thus a possible shelter for the Divine Presence.

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E

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Figure 4. Plan of the Synagogue at Hammam Lif. Based on an illustration in Ernest Renan, “La Mosaïque de Hammam Lif: Nouvelles observations,” Revue archéologique 3 (1884), p. 274.

(In such a case, the Rabbis said, an individual could not be accused of idolatry.)

Given the Hellenistic elements in synagogue architecture, it is unsurprising that when Rabbi Judah ben Illai described the Great Synagogue of Alexandria, writing in the Talmud in the Aramaic language, he used Greek architectural terms (transliterated into the Aramaic script). Thus he described the double colonnade as a diplostoon, using the Greek, and the whole building as a basilica, also a Greek architectural word for a particular floor plan.

He had no Aramaic words to describe such architecture. Synagogue buildings differed from place to place but could include such features as courtyards, monumental entrances, a main hall, benches, and columns.

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In spite of scholarly attempts to discern a systematic development from one type of synagogue plan to another, there was no particularly favored plan in any specific period or even place. In Beit Shan in modern Israel, five ancient synagogues built within a few years of each other exhibit five different floor plans. It seems obvious that choices of plans were made according to personal taste and available budget, just as is true in buildings today.

The ruins of the Hammam Lif synagogue have completely disappeared since 1883. In fact, a 1909 attempt to relocate them was unsuccessful. Yet the floor plan is known from a drawing made by Captain Prudhomme (Figure 4). The plan shows a sixteen-room complex measuring about 22 by 20 meters (about 72 by 65½ feet). Its organization somewhat resembles a typical Roman house, which also gave rise to the layout of many early Christian churches.

If the plan is regarded as that of a house, the main entrance was on the south side of the building. There were also subsidiary entrances on the east and west sides. Visitors or worshippers entered through a doorway supported by two columns and passed into a typical Roman atrium (the area labeled A in the floor plan, Figure 4). The atrium, or interior court, seen in a Roman

Figure 5. Fish Facing Right. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 18 11 ⁄ 16 x 31¾ inches (47.5 x 80.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.16

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Figure 6. Rooster. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 22 x 29½ inches (55.9 x 75 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.23

house was also an element of early Christian churches. The Roman atrium was an unroofed or partially roofed area with rooms opening from it. Used as an entrance hall in a house, it had an impluvium (the Latin term for the shallow pool in its floor), built to receive the rainwater falling through the compluvium (the opening in the roof). The impluvium was generally lined with marble or mosaic and sunk about a foot below the floor of the atrium.

In the case of the Naro synagogue this pool would have been paved with panels that probably included a mosaic of a fish (Figure 5) and perhaps the mosaic of a rooster (Figure 6). Water installations of various sorts are often found in ancient synagogue entrances, perhaps intended for worshippers to use in purifying themselves.

The mosaics of a fish and a rooster were created in a style consistent with the main sanctuary mosaic. There is a minimal amount of modeling but a strong outline in black tesserae (small cubes of cut stone). The water of the pool is represented by a double zigzag line of tesserae in black and gray.

Both the fish and the rooster appear elsewhere in Jewish contexts during Late Antiquity as symbols of the coming Messianic Age; both are represented in Jewish catacombs in Rome, for example. The rooster was, however, relatively 18

rare in Jewish imagery, though the fish commonly signified fertility and rebirth in Jewish as well as Roman symbolism.

A visitor or worshipper would pass from the atrium into a rectangular portico of unknown purpose (labeled B in the floor plan), covered in lozengeshaped mosaic. It contained a mosaic inscription naming the patrons who paid for paving this area, among them the temple official Asterius (see Figure 2).

The portico communicates with the main sanctuary (labeled C), paved with mosaic and containing an apse, a semicircular space. This was usually occupied by an aedicule, an opening framed by two columns and a pediment and placed against the west wall. Rather than containing a statue as in many pagan buildings, here the aedicule was either the site of the Seat of Moses, occupied by the synagogue head, or the place where the scroll of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) was read. Though no evidence of stairs is preserved for Hammam Lif, often the area for reading the Torah was raised above the main floor. If there were steps to a platform in the aedicule, their presence might explain why part of the floor directly in front of it was not paved with mosaic.

Four doors in the east wall of the main sanctuary open into three small, square rooms and one long, rectangular room or hallway. One of these rooms (marked D on the plan) contained a double inscription (Figure 7) describing this spot as the place where the Torah scrolls were stored, using the word instrumenta, found in early Christian writings, to refer to the Bible.

The other rooms served unknown purposes that could have included cooking and eating as well as storage space and sleeping rooms for Jews visiting from other towns. The room labeled E in the floor plan does not communicate with the rest of the building; surviving evidence does not elucidate its purpose.

One of the great surprises that synagogue archaeology revealed in modern times was the presence of figural mosaic decoration, in apparent disregard of the Second Commandment and Rabbinic strictures on artistic representations. Such decorations in synagogues all around the Mediterranean included the Greek zodiac, pagan gods such as Helios riding in a chariot, and in one case, in Beit Shan, scenes from the Odyssey. In fact, twentieth-century textual discoveries show that some Rabbis accepted figural decorations in synagogues in ancient times. Fragments of the Jerusalem Talmud, an ancient commentary on Jewish law, discovered in the Cairo Genizah (a burial ground for damaged 19

Figure 7. Instrumenta Inscription from Hammam Lif. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 30 ³⁄ 8 x 28³⁄ 8 inches (77 x 72 cm).

Collection of the Bardo Museum, Tunis. Reproduced from Ernest Renan, “La Mosaïque de Hammam Lif: Nouvelles observations,” Revue archéologique 3 (1884), pl. XI. The inscription reads: “Instruments of Your servant from Naro” and “Instruments of Your servant the Naronitan.”

or torn documents that contain the name of God), claim that “in the days of Rabbi Yohanan [third century] they began to paint on walls, and he did not prevent them” and that “in the days of Rabbi Abun [fourth century] they began to make designs on mosaics and he did not prevent them.” Though these fragments do not explicitly advocate figural decorations, they can only refer to the Rabbis accepting contemporaneous decorations that were in fact figural.

There were many approaches to decorating a synagogue in various periods. Jews produced figural decoration from early in the Davidic Period (circa ninth century b.c.e.) to about the Hasmonean Period (166–63 b.c.e.). After the Romans conquered Judea in 63 b.c.e., Jews stopped producing figural art until the later Roman Empire and Byzantine period (third century to seventh century c.e.) These facts can be established through mosaics and coins discovered both in modern Israel and throughout the Diaspora. This third-century reintroduction of figuration might have stemmed from the realization that the synagogue was the only place to memorialize the Second Temple of Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 70 c.e. Thus objects originating in the Temple were represented in the synagogue and entered the Jewish artistic vocabulary.

These elements included the menorah, baskets of bread, the incense shovel, the shofar, the lulav, and the ethrog. The menorah, as mentioned earlier, was a seven-branched candelabra known to have been in the Temple.

The basket of bread was a reference to the ordination of priests. The priests of the Temple used the incense shovel in rituals in the Temple. The shofar was a ram’s horn used as a musical instrument to call the people to prayer and announce the New Year. Finally, the lulav and ethrog, usually grouped together, represented the four types of trees recognized in biblical times and which were offered at the pilgrimage festival called Sukkot. The lulav consists 20

of a palm frond woven with myrtle and willow, the first three species of trees.

The fourth species is represented by the ethrog, or “citron.� Of these artistic elements, the menorah is certainly represented twice in the sanctuary floor at Hammam Lif (Figures 14, 16) and the basket of bread is represented in the large carpet-like mosaic (Figure 24). Some scholars have also recognized the shofar, the lulav, and the ethrog at Hammam Lif (see Figure 15).

In general, the mosaics of any particular synagogue resembled mosaics used in surrounding buildings, both pagan and Christian. This observation is also true at Hammam Lif, where the synagogue mosaics resemble other Roman North African floors made in the sixth century c.e. North African mosaics are known for the floral style that uses plants to form geometric patterns. These patterns create spaces to represent animals or other types of symbols. White backgrounds, as are found here, are also characteristic of North African work. In general, fifth- and sixth-century mosaics in North Africa use bright colors for figures, but the forms are flat, with strongly defined outlines. Mosaic artists avoided human figures in the fifth and sixth centuries but represented birds as well as land and sea animals. In this period, the figures do not overlap and artists did not depict recession into space. Rather, artists concentrated on presenting a clear message. In these settings, the most popular forms were symbols taken from nature, which God both created and ruled. In Hammam Lif, such common North African elements include birds, a hare, and baskets of bread and fruit in the large carpet. Representations of marine life were also especially popular in Roman North Africa and are included here in the mosaics’ depiction of Creation. The image of the fountain, central to the portrayal here of Paradise, was a common decorative element in both mosaic and textiles. The synagogue decoration at Hammam Lif thus fits comfortably into its time and place.

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Figure 8. Drawing of the Sanctuary Floor at Hammam Lif (Rendered by Corporal Peco). Reproduced from Ernest Renan, “La Mosaïque de Hammam Lif: Nouvelles observations,” Revue archéologique 3 (1884), pls. VII, VIII.

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The Sanctuary Mosaic

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he Hammam Lif sanctuary mosaic is oriented so that the worshipper must stand facing toward the east, and thus Jerusalem, while viewing it.

This fact explains the odd positioning of the floor mosaic with respect to the entrances from the east and south sides of the building.

The mosaic divides into three large areas (see the drawing of the mosaic, Figure 8, made by a certain Corporal Peco while working for Captain Prudhomme). A large carpet-like area, called an inhabited scroll, depicts vines and flowers surrounding birds, baskets of bread and fruit, and a hare.

It would have been on the viewer’s left. The central portion of the mosaic contains two scenes—Creation and Paradise—and a donor’s inscription flanked on each side by a menorah. Finally, a narrow carpet, on the viewer’s right, depicts a bird and a lion enclosed in a vine scroll. Each area has an elaborate border surrounding it.

Many scholars continue to resist interpreting the mosaics in ancient synagogues out of religious scruples. Like Salomon Reinach, writing in 1886, they explain all representations in synagogues as mere decoration, thus hoping to absolve the makers of violating the prohibition against graven images. Yet the fantastic nature of some of the images suggests that their makers went beyond mere decoration. The Creation scene, showing the sea, includes ropes or vines protruding from the mouths of the large fish and the dolphin, a hand reaching down from the heavens, and a wheel suspended from the sky. Surely such a scene contains symbols, rather than just decoration. Moreover, many of the elements on the floor, such as the menorahs, fish, and birds, are present on Jewish tombstones and catacombs of the same period. It seems unlikely that symbols appearing on graves would be only a decoration when repeated on the floor. Finally, the congregation at the Naro synagogue lived in a world where mosaic floors in religious buildings generally did hold symbolic meaning.

The congregation’s use of Latin in the patrons’ inscriptions clearly demonstrates that members of this congregation participated fully in the culture surrounding them. It would be natural, then, for them to use symbols familiar to them from that culture in order to express their ideas about their own religion.

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For this reason, the interpretation offered here of the sanctuary mosaic will begin with the basic idea expressed in the accompanying inscription, and then look at the ways the symbols used in the floor were also used in the surrounding culture. It will then be possible to interpret the floor itself.

The Donor’s Inscription The first key to the meaning of these symbols is the inscription in Latin in the center of the floor (Figure 9). Some elements of the translation remain obscure, since North African Latin of the sixth century did not always follow

Figure 9. Julia Inscription from Hammam Lif. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 22½ x 76 inches (57 x 193 cm). Collection of the Bardo Museum, Tunis. Reproduced from Ernest Renan, “La Mosaïque de Hammam Lif: Nouvelles observations,” Revue archéologique 3 (1884), pls. IX, X.

the same spelling and grammatical rules as the more easily translated classical Latin used in Rome during the first century. Yet a translation that represents the consensus of scholarly opinion would read: Your servant, Julia Nap., at her own expense, paved the holy synagogue of Naro with mosaic for her salvation.

It is impossible to know how much influence Julia Nap. (perhaps an abbreviation of her family name), personally, would have exerted over the content of the scene depicted. It is certain from similar instances in other locations that the patron of the floor received a special seat of honor in the synagogue.

Julia’s financial support for the floor suggests that the floor’s symbols represented ideas she shared with the congregation about Judaism. And Julia believed, according to this inscription, that personal salvation was a concern in the coming Messianic Age. This view was apparently common in Naro, 25

though it is foreign as a primary concern to modern Judaism in any of its varieties of practice. Moreover, Erwin R. Goodenough has suggested, in his groundbreaking, thirteen-volume study Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, that the scenes on the sanctuary floor represent a vision of Julia’s salvation. That is, the scenes of Creation and Paradise represent the text of the biblical Creation story in Genesis, but they also represent a re-creation of the world and reestablishment of Paradise at the end of time, when the saved will live after death. It thus also represents the coming of the Messiah.

Goodenough’s interpretation deserves consideration, if only because it is the only interpretation of this material that takes the context in Roman North Africa seriously. For Jews, no matter where they lived in the Diaspora, were influenced by their neighbors’ ideas. And mosaic-making itself reflects the wider culture more than a practice indigenous to Judaism. Yet the common symbols that Jews, Christians, and pagans used at this time must also have had a specific meaning for Jews, though they might not always have had the same meaning for their neighbors. That is to say, though they shared many symbols with their neighbors, Jews must have employed the artistic vocabulary of the Roman world in a way they found compatible with their own beliefs.

The Creation Scene The scene at the top center of the floor must originally have represented the land, sea, and air, the three divisions of the natural world recognized in biblical thought. In Genesis, each of these areas was a separate zone of Creation.

Only the animals of the sea and the animals of the air were fully visible in the mosaic even at the time when Prudhomme excavated the floor. Two large sea animals, one a fish, the other a dolphin, dominate the seascape. Two ducks also float on the water. The two drawings of the floor as discovered record plants on the shore and perhaps the head of a bull, representing land animals.

Undoubtedly other land animals would have been represented in the complete mosaic. In the sky, there is a spiked shape in the drawings made by Corporal Peco and an earlier drawing made by Prudhomme. Prudhomme’s drawing gives it six spikes, while Peco’s drawing records four spikes. Nevertheless, Goodenough has interpreted it as the hand of God, based on parallels in the second-century synagogue of Dura Europos, in modern Syria. A round shape, perhaps a wheel, also descends from the sky and perhaps floats on the water.

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Figure 10. Fish’s Head Facing Left. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 28¹⁄ 16 x 31 15 ⁄ 16 inches (71.2 x 81.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.15

The collection of symbols represented in the Creation scene all point toward an interpretation that stresses the re-creation of the world when the Messiah comes. Symbols of fertility, rebirth, God’s kindly intentions, and God’s emanations were combined to stress the process in which Julia expected to achieve salvation. Each of these elements can be considered separately as symbols that convey meaning in the scene, stressing the coming of the Messiah.

The fish (Figure 10), for example, was a common fertility symbol in Jewish thought, just as it was earlier for Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Romans.

Jews wore fish amulets that symbolized fertility and birth and depicted fish on their tombs to suggest the hope for rebirth in the next life. Until the twentieth century, Tunisian Jewish women wore headdresses decorated with gold disks inscribed with fish symbolic of their hope for many children. Though 27

Figure 11. Dolphin Facing Left. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 13 9 ⁄ 16 x 26¼ inches (34.5 x 66.6 cm).

Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.17

use of this symbol has not survived in most branches of Judaism today, in ancient times it was common.

Jews also shared fish symbolism with the early Christians. For example, both the Rabbis and the early church fathers described the faithful as “fish.” Perhaps the image originates with the prophet Habbakuk, who remarked that God “makes men as the fish of the sea.” Rabbi Samuel said of this passage, writing in the third century: 28

Men are compared with fishes because just as fishes of the sea die at once when they come up on dry land, so does man also die as soon as he abandons the Torah and the precepts.

The church father Tertullian made a similar comparison: But we, being little fishes, as Jesus Christ is our great Fish, begin our life in the water, and only while we abide in the water are we safe and sound.

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He was of course speaking of the sacrament of Baptism, which for Christians had replaced the Law as the source of eternal life. Despite these differences, clearly the comparison of fish with ordinary believers was a symbol common to both of them.

At the same time that Jews and early Christians regarded the faithful as fish, the faithful were also contrasted with a bigger fish, which was associated with the Messiah. In ancient Judaism, the faithful were contrasted with Leviathan, which originated in biblical thought as a great sea monster. In the Talmud, however, Leviathan was reconceived as a fish. Rabbi Ashi of the fourth century wrote of catching Leviathan with a hook (like the rope or vine visible in the fish’s mouth in Figure 10), just as ordinary smaller fish were caught. Rabbi Johanan went further, calling Leviathan an edible fish, meaning that it was kosher, possessing scales and gills. Indeed, Leviathan would help announce the coming of the Messiah, for, when he comes, “The Holy One, blessed be he, will in time to come make a banquet for the righteous from the flesh of Leviathan.” In fact, Jews of antiquity regularly ate fish on Friday evening in anticipation of the Messianic Age. In the Christian tradition, fish is a symbol of the Eucharist. In the earliest representations of the Last Supper, the main course was fish. The miracle of the loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:13–23, 15:32–39; Mark 6:32–44, 8:1–9; Luke 9:10–17, John 6:4–15) also stresses the sacramental nature of eating fish and served as a precursor of the Last Supper. The clear line between Jewish and Christian thought according to the Rabbis and the Church might not have been so clear to ordinary Christians and Jews, for in antiquity both shared the eating of fish as a symbol of the Messianic Age. The dolphin (Figure 11) represented the kindly intentions of the deity toward humanity for both pagans and early Christians. The Greeks had linked the dolphin with deities that save humans in shipwrecks. But by Late Antiquity, the dolphin could be associated with nearly any kindly deity and was part of the symbolic vocabulary artists could use to represent the idea that a deity would provide a happy life after death. Thus dolphins are also found decorating Jewish tombs as well as on the floor in the main sanctuary of the synagogue. Moreover, dolphins could symbolize erotic love and reproduction also appropriate to the symbolism of rebirth after death. Thus the Rabbis could say, “Dolphins are fruitful and multiply by coupling with human beings. What are dolphins? Said Rab Judah: Humans of the sea.”

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Ducks and geese, which were represented in Jewish catacombs, also appear in the Naro synagogue floor (Figure 12). The goose especially was a common symbol around the Mediterranean of both creation and erotic forces. In Egypt, the goose was also a symbol of creation as the sacred animal of the god Geb.

Figure 12. Duck or Goose Facing Left. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 23¹⁄ 8 x 28¾ inches (58.7 x 73 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.20

Such ideas spread throughout the Roman world with the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whom the Greeks and Romans also worshipped. In Greek mythology the goose was an erotic symbol of Zeus. A goose often accompanies images of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and Eros, her companion. The duck or goose depicted at Naro seems to add to the Jewish use of the symbolism of rebirth and creation.

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An image of a bull occupied a destroyed part of the Creation scene. Only the head of a bull is clear in the drawing (Figure 13), while the area that his body occupied is a blank space. This loss makes understanding the scene even more difficult, since the relationship between the bull and the large fish in the scene remains unclear. In the drawing, a rope or vine emerges from the bull’s mouth, just as in the case of the fish. The drawing suggests that a flower with a long stem and leaves may have somehow united the fish and the bull.

Figure 13. Creation scene from Drawing of the Sanctuary Floor at Hammam Lif (Rendered by Corporal Peco) (detail of Figure 8)

This relationship is also reflected in post-biblical Jewish literature.

One source for understanding the role of the bull in Late Antique Judaism is the Book of Enoch. This text was composed in part in Aramaic as early as the second century b.c.e. Other chapters were added until the third century c.e. Though it was not included in either the Hebrew or Christian Bible, the text reflects an alternative Judaism widespread in the ancient world. For example, copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the library of an ancient Jewish sectarian community living in Qumran near the Dead Sea, dating from the third century b.c.e. to 68 c.e. Its presence there suggests that members of that group studied the text. Translators later produced versions in Greek, Latin, and Geez (an ancient Ethiopian language) that were studied throughout the ancient world. In this text, a white bull with large horns is a 32

symbol of the Messiah and all people will be transformed into white bulls and cows at the end of time. The Book of Enoch suggests the reason that many Jews in this period included bulls on their tombstones and why a bull would be included in a scene of the re-creation of the world at the end of time.

The Rabbis also recognized a connection between the coming of the Messiah and a bull. In the Midrash Rabbah on Lamentations (Chapter 1 and 16:51) a bull announces the coming of the Messiah. Moreover, Joseph’s descendants, the tribe of Ephraim, include a bull on their standard, and it is they who will, in the Midrash, destroy Rome, for the Rabbis conceived the end of the Roman state as coterminous with the coming of the Messiah. The Rabbis also recognized the mythical animal Behemoth, a bull that would fight Leviathan, the sea monster, at the end of time, a battle that also would result in the coming of the Messiah. Thus, the bull played an important symbolic role in both Rabbinic and non-Rabbinic Judaism of Late Antiquity.

Corporal Peco’s drawing of the floor (Figure 13) also shows a round object, which scholars have identified as a wheel. The wheel either descends from Heaven or floats on the sea between the dolphin and the large fish. There are also round symbols filling the spaces between the vines and the border of the smaller “carpet,” on the right side of the floor (see Figure 8). Such symbols are well known from Jewish tomb walls, tomb doors, ossuaries, sarcophagi, and lamps as well as from the synagogue floor at Elche, Spain, also created in the sixth century c.e. Some of these round objects are rosettes, an ornament with a circular arrangement of its parts that radiate from the center and suggest the petals of a rose. And the rosette appears to be the origin of the wheel as a symbol. The wheel, as is found here, consists of three concentric circles, often joined with spokes.

The rosettes and wheels derive from chariots that have a connection with the sun. The pagan god Helios drove the sun across the sky in a chariot that was depicted in synagogue mosaics. Jews might also have related the chariot to the ascent of Elijah into heaven in a chariot, described in 2 Kings 2:1, 2:12. Yet these round symbols also were a common pagan and Christian symbol of the hope for eternal life and the light that emanates from a deity.

The Jews of Naro must have been aware of this usage and adapted it to their purpose in the synagogue floor.

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The Menorahs Two menorahs, or seven-branched lamps, flank Julia’s inscription (Figures 14−16). One of the mosaics includes two images flanking the menorah, possibly a lulav and ethrog, together acting as symbols of the four species of trees offered at the Jerusalem Temple at the pilgrimage festival of Sukkot, according to Exodus 23:16. These symbols often accompany images of menorahs in ancient synagogues and also express a hope for the restoration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The mosaic was treated by art restorers sometime

Figure 14. Menorah with Lulav [?] and Ethrog [?]. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 22 5 ⁄ 8 x 34 15 ⁄ 16 inches (57.4 x 88.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.26

Figure 15. Drawing of a Menorah with Lulav [?] and Ethrog [?] (detail), circa 1884. Reproduced from Ernest Renan, “La Mosaïque de Hammam Lif: Nouvelles observations,” Revue archéologique 3 (1884), pl. IX

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Figure 16. Menorah. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 22 7⁄ 16 x 35¼ inches (57 x 89.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.27

between 1883, when it was found, and 1905, when it entered the Brooklyn Museum, and as a result the images of these two symbols lost their original shapes. A drawing of this mosaic panel published in the Revue archéologique in 1884 (Figure 15) reveals how different the shapes looked before their alteration.

The shape of the menorahs themselves is consistent with similar images throughout the Diaspora and in the land of Israel. They also resemble the menorah depicted as imperial plunder on the Arch of Titus in Rome around 81 c.e. (Figure 3). The image thus depicts the menorah of the Second Temple, though the prophet Zechariah mentions the menorah as the “seven eyes of God” (Zechariah 4:2) in the year 521 b.c.e., eighty-five years before the Temple was built. Some have thought the lights of the menorah in a synagogue represent the Divine Presence that formerly inhabited the Jerusalem Temple. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 b.c.e.–50 c.e.) thought the seven lights represented the seven planets, while others suggested the lights represent the days of the week. The three-legged base, according to the much later Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135–1204 c.e.), represents teaching, work, and benevolence, the foundation of the world.

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The Paradise Scene The image of Paradise below the inscription has been constructed from a variety of Jewish and Roman symbols (see Corporal Peco’s drawing, Figure 8). It is arranged symmetrically with two palm trees on either side. The trees were flanked by flowers and vines that reappear in the carpets to the right and left of this scene. In the center two peacocks face each other, hovering above two partridges facing away from each other. The center of the panel is dominated by a flowing, two-handled urn with a shell decoration called a gadroon. Each of the symbols expresses part of the vision of a re-created Paradise at the end of time.

The trees (Figure 17) most likely represent the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, both mentioned in Genesis 2:16. God permitted Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Life but not from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At the serpent’s suggestion, Eve ate from the forbidden tree and as a result God expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise.

In the Jewish tradition, this story explained pain in childbirth and why men worked, the two specific punishments described in Genesis. The Christian tradition understood this story as the source of original sin. Yet in ancient times, the palm tree had a wider significance.

Jews represented palm trees and branches on sarcophagi, ossuaries, coins, and lamps in ancient times. The Beth Alpha synagogue, in modern Israel, also dating to the sixth century c.e., depicts palms surrounding God’s hand and surrounding the scene where God supplies a ram sacrifice to Abraham, allowing him to substitute an animal for his son Isaac. Furthermore, the palm is a symbol of righteous people in the Jewish tradition. In Psalm 92:12 the righteous are said to “flourish like a palm tree.” This verse perhaps explains why palm trees were appropriate decoration for objects found in graves. A fourth-century Jewish coffin discovered in Rome is decorated with palms on each side of a menorah. In a pagan coffin of the same period, the palms replace the image of Victory, representing the triumph over death.

Figure 17. Date Palm Tree (Tree of Paradise). From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 70 9 ⁄ 16 x 31 inches (179.3 x 78.8 cm).

Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.14

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Peacocks were a widespread symbol of immortality in Roman times. They appear in Roman Jewish catacombs and on Jewish tombstones, sometimes flanking a menorah. Peacocks are also inscribed on lamps and on synagogue floors in both the land of Israel and at Naro.

Many scholars believe that peacocks first symbolized eternal life in India, where tradition holds that eating peacock leads to immortality. This significance appeared in Athens in the fifth century b.c.e. It was at this time that the peacock was linked with the goddess Hera. Peacocks were kept at her temple in Samos.

According to the Roman poet Ovid, peacocks were associated with Hera because they have stars on their tails (stars that were interpreted as the hundred eyes of Argus, Hera’s servant). The connection with Hera probably led the Romans to make the peacock a symbol of the empress, when she became a goddess in death: the peacock served as the empress’s psychopomp, a guide that leads her soul to the next world.

Early Christians also used peacocks in representations of Paradise, showing these birds near a fountain, as here at the Naro synagogue (Figure 8).

Jews must have both understood the meaning of peacocks in the wider culture and adapted that meaning to their own funerary beliefs. The peacock fits well into the scheme of the Naro synagogue floor, portraying the hope of immortality in Paradise after death.

Both partridges and quails (Figures 17, 23, 32) were linked with the dead, and with life-giving love, in the Greek tradition. Both Aristotle and Xenophon connected these birds with arousing the passions. The quail or partridge in the vine in the large carpet shows the passions controlled by divine order. Perhaps these depictions of the quail in Paradise are a reference to Adam and Eve’s disobedience.

The urn with shell decoration occupies the center of the panel representing Paradise on the synagogue floor. The gadroon, or ornamental band, above the urn’s pedestal is here derived from a seashell motif. The scallop shell was used to decorate Torah shrines, ossuaries, and lamps in the Jewish tradition. After the vine and the rosette, the shell is the most commonly attested symbol used by the Jews of Late Antiquity. The shell sanctifies whatever it touches. The symbolism of the shell originated with the shell that gave birth to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, but it continued to be used by Jews, Christians, and later Muslims in their reli38

Figure 18. Vine Growing in Urn. From Egypt. Fourth to fifth century c.e. Linen tapestry, 87⁄16 x 6½ inches (21.5 x 16.5 cm).

Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Pratt Institute, 42.438.1

gious decorations. The symbol of the urn is very common and found also in contemporaneous textiles (Figure 18). In addition, the urn in the floor mosaic spouts a liquid as if it were a fountain. In a Christian context, the spouting urn was a common symbol of Paradise. On the floor panel, taken together with the flanking peacocks, the urn symbolizes the life-giving cup at the center of Paradise.

The Large and Small Carpets The large and small carpets occupy the space to the left and right of the scenes of Creation and Paradise. Both were designed with the inhabited-scroll motif.

In this design, a vine, symbol of fertility, creates spaces filled with birds, baskets of bread and fruit, a hare, and a lion. Overall, the vine represents the divine order, harnessing and controlling symbols of fertility and power, and alluding to the reestablishment of the Temple. The vine also commonly appears in many Roman and Christian contexts where the god of wine serves as the starting point for the vine that spreads throughout the carpet.

Two Late Antique textiles from Egypt (Figures 19, 35) show how widespread this motif was in the Roman world. Derived from this Roman model, the carpets are an abstract representation of God’s will for the world. They represent God’s control over all sources of fertility and creativity.

Figure 19. Border with Bird, Animal, and Portrait Head Design (detail). From Egypt. Sixth century c.e. Wool and linen, 6 5 ⁄ 16 x 33¹⁄ 16 inches (16 x 84 cm.). Brooklyn Museum. Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 38.756.

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Figure 20. Duck in a Vine Facing Left. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 34½ x 33¹⁄ 16 inches (87.7 x 84 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.21

The inhabited scrolls of the large carpet hold nine birds, including five wading birds, two quails or partridges, and two ducks (Figures 20, 21, 23). The small carpet depicts a goose or duck. The symbolic functions of the quails and ducks have been discussed already in their occurrence in the scenes of Creation and Paradise. They are fairly common, as is attested by a fifth-century Jewish incense burner perhaps used ritually in an Egyptian synagogue or home (Figure 22). The wading birds appear to belong to the same tradition in both Jewish and Roman art. Yet scholars have not established a specific meaning for the wading birds in the vine, even though this symbolism is common.

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Figure 21. Duck in a Vine Facing Right. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 21¾ x 33³⁄ 8 inches (55.3 x 84.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.19

Figure 22. Incense Burner. From Egypt. Fifth century c.e.

Bronze, 11¼ x 5½ inches (28.5 x 14 cm). Brooklyn Museum.

Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 41.684

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Figure 23. Quail in a Vine. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 27 7⁄ 8 x 21 5 ⁄ 8 inches (70.8 x 55 cm).

Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.34

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Two baskets are also enclosed in the vine. One holds bread (Figure 24), the other fruit (Figure 25). The basket of bread is a rare symbol in ancient synagogues in that it is indigenous to Jewish tradition and not borrowed from the pagan Roman symbolic vocabulary. The texts of Exodus 29 and Leviticus 8 describe such baskets among the objects needed to consecrate a priest (Kohen). The bread is called unleavened bread (lekhem matzot) and unleavened cake (challat matzot) in Exodus and just matzah in Leviticus. Many English translations of the Bible call it the shewbread.

Both biblical passages record that the bread should be kept in a basket in preparation for presenting it to God and for the new priest to eat. In the Temple of Jerusalem, the bread was displayed on a table that ultimately was among the booty depicted in relief on the Arch of Titus after the Temple’s destruction in 70 c.e. The Christian sacrament of the Eucharist is also related to this tradition. Very similar images of baskets of bread are known from Christian churches in Roman North Africa. In fact, a parallel image in the mosaic floor of the Church of Moussat in Tunisia helps to date the Naro floor to about 500 c.e. The basket of bread could symbolize the hope for the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple.

Figure 24. Round Basket with Bread. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 27 9 ⁄16 x 23¼ inches (70 x 59 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.25

Figure 25. Square Basket with Fruit. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 27¾ x 23 13 ⁄ 16 inches (70.5 x 60.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.24

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The basket of fruit, adjacent to the basket of bread, probably represents the custom of sacrificing first fruits. When the Temple of Jerusalem existed, Jews brought first fruits to the Temple in baskets at the spring and the fall harvest. This custom was not adopted by the synagogues. Perhaps this reference to an already ancient practice in association with symbols of rebirth in the world to come combines to express a hope for the reestablishment of the Temple.

Images of hares are found at other contemporaneous synagogues, often enough to be considered a common Jewish symbol. They are found in Rome, the land of Israel, and in North Africa. In Christian symbolism, the hare is also often shown running, as in the Naro mosaic. The hare has a long history of symbolic meaning in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome (Figures 18, 26). Both Greek and Roman art stress the hare as the object of the hunt and for its association with Eros. Both Greek and Roman art enclose the hare in a vine or show it eating grapes. It is both a plaything as the object of the hunt and a symbol of love related to the vine.

Jewish texts, however, only rarely mention the hare. It is considered an unclean animal, which cannot be eaten, because it does not chew its cud.

The Jewish use of the running hare on the synagogue floor is thus evidence of a certain amount of independence from the textual traditions. The artistic tradition can only sometimes be understood on the basis of texts. Often, the symbols found on synagogue floors demonstrate that the Jews of Roman North Africa felt comfortable with Roman symbols and could even disregard traditional Jewish associations.

Figure 26. Purple Hare in Foliage (detail). From Egypt.

Fourth to fifth century c.e. Wool, 8Âź x 8Âź inches (21 x 21 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Pratt Institute, 42.438.2

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Figure 27. Lion. From Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Sixth century c.e. Stone, 28 5 ⁄ 16 x 6 13 ⁄ 16 inches (72.2 x 17.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.18

The Naro synagogue was not the only such building to portray a lion in a vine (Figure 27). A lion in a vine also appeared in an ancient synagogue in Jaffa near modern Tel Aviv, Israel. The vine, symbolizing divine order, is depicted as so powerful that it contains the power of the lion within it. The lion in the vine thus becomes a symbol of God’s saving power. Lions were connected with the Greek deity Dionysus, the god of wine and the vine, from early antiquity, demonstrating an early connection in symbolic thought among the vine, wine, and the lion. Here, the Jews of Naro adapted the symbol to their own use.

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The sanctuary floor at the Naro synagogue presents many puzzles. Though it is less surprising to viewers today than it was to its nineteenth-century discoverers, its blend of Roman and Jewish traditions has yet to be entirely clarified. In spite of remaining questions, the floor presents clear evidence for the ways that Jews living in Roman North Africa had adapted their thinking to their environment. Jews like Julia, the floor’s patron, practiced a Judaism in the synagogue that was expressed through a prism of Roman culture. They used the common symbols of that visual culture to tell a story and express thoughts that were typically Jewish. The Creation, for example, divides the world into its biblical zones of creation as found in the Hebrew Bible. Yet each zone is filled with symbols derived from both Jewish and Roman tradition. The scene depicting Paradise also can be understood through knowledge of the biblical Genesis, but the individual parts that are assembled to tell the story derive from the Roman vocabulary of birds and fountains combined with the Jewish idea of the palm tree. Moreover, the eschatological view of the world, envisioning its re-creation, might even have had some basis in contemporary Jewish prayer. Yet the floor shows, in microcosm, the use Jews made in the Late Antique world of symbols and institutions that were essentially Roman. For the synagogue itself is an institution very much at home in the Roman world.

Unplaced Mosaics from Prudhomme’s Collection Nine of the mosaic panels that the Brooklyn Museum purchased in 1905 and believed to be from Prudhomme’s collection do not appear in Corporal Peco’s drawing of the sanctuary floor. Scholars have placed two of these nine (Figures 5, 6) in the synagogue’s atrium. Some scholars have rejected the possibility that the remaining seven mosaics came from the Naro synagogue because two of them (Figures 28, 30) include the human figure.

Yet many ancient synagogue floors discovered after Naro do include the human figure and even pagan mythological figures, such as the Greek sun god Helios. In light of this archaeological evidence, the figural mosaics cannot immediately be excluded from consideration as belonging to the Naro synagogue on grounds of their content alone. But unfortunately,

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Figure 28. Male Figure in a Medallion. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. First to second century c.e. Stone, 21š⠄ 8 inches (53.7 cm) diameter. Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.28

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Figure 29. Gazelle in a Medallion. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. First to second century c.e. Stone, 21Âź inches (54 cm) diameter. Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.30

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Figure 30. Personification of Roma. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. First to second century c.e. Stone, 21Âź inches (54 cm) diameter. Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.29

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Figure 31. Gazelle in a Vine. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. First to second century c.e. Stone, 27 15 â „ 16 inches (71 cm) diameter. Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.31

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neither can it be demonstrated that they share anything beyond a modern connection, through Prudhomme, with the known sanctuary mosaics.

Most of the unplaced panels fall into two distinct groups. The first group includes the male figure in a medallion (Figure 28) and the gazelle in a medallion (Figure 29). The two share a common style, size, and border treatment. That is, both mosaics are in the illusionistic style of the first to second centuries c.e.; the two images are also nearly the same size and are both encircled by a border of black, gray, and peach-colored tesserae. Many floor mosaics of the period depict a central male figure in a medallion with animals arranged around him, also within medallions.

The two panels in this first group could have come from such an arrangement in another room in the synagogue, paved at an earlier time than was the sanctuary.

The second group would include the personification of Roma (Figure 30), the gazelle in a vine (Figure 31), and the lion in a medallion (Figure 34). In the first and second centuries c . e ., the period of these three mosaics, Roman artists commonly depicted the female figure of Roma, the personification of the Roman state. The interest in Roma at this time perhaps derived from the activities of the emperor Hadrian and his son the emperor Antonius Pius, who built the Temple of Venus and Roma in the Roman Forum. If indeed Jews of this period included the image of Roma in the synagogue, their practice could be comparable to the modern American custom of displaying a United States flag in synagogue sanctuaries. The panels of the gazelle in a vine and the lion in a medallion share the same style and have borders of leaves in black, gray, and peach-colored tesserae similar to the border of the Roma panel.

Again, a likely arrangement of panels such as these would place a human figure in the center, dominating the animals arrayed around it. Both the gazelle and the lion are known Jewish symbols: the gazelle is commonly mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as an embodiment of grace, while the lion symbolizes power.

A single unplaced mosaic, outside the two groups, depicts a bird of the species known as a Barbary partridge, or Alectoris barbara (Figure 32). It is the sole example of an emblema, or insert panel, from Captain Prudhomme’s collection. Inserts are small-scale panels created in the studio from very small

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Figure 32. Partridge. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. First to second century c.e. Stone, 12½ x 17 11 ⁄ 16 inches (31.7 x 44.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.22

Figure 33. Hyena. Claimed to be from Hammam Lif, Tunisia. Imitation of first to second century c.e. mosaic (made before 1905). Stone, 18¼ x 18¼ inches (46.3 x 46.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.33

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tesserae and intended to be set into a larger mosaic scheme being made on the spot. They were sometimes exported from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. Though this emblema fits into the same period as the other unplaced mosaics, it has no obvious connection with the other panels except through Prudhomme’s collection.

The original source of these non-sanctuary panels will probably never be known with certainty. Yet they are fine examples of the mosaicmakers’ art.

Finally, the mosaic of a hyena (Figure 33), also from Prudhomme’s collection, is probably a nineteenth-century attempt to imitate a Roman mosaic of the first or second century c . e . Its particular subject matter and style, however, are not otherwise known among ancient mosaics of that era.

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The Synagogue in Late Antiquity

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o more fully understand the place of the Brooklyn mosaics within the Naro synagogue, it is important to consider the nature and purposes of the ancient synagogue itself as a religious institution. The synagogue in fact developed in the Hellenistic/Roman world, and though Jews fashioned the institution for their own purpose, it nonetheless exhibited some vestiges and reflections of the surrounding complex of Mediterranean cultures. Many of the functions and governing structures of the ancient synagogue seem quite familiar from the synagogue as we know it today, yet other of its functions were typically Roman. Indeed, it is the very adaptability of the synagogue as a functioning institution that ensured its survival into modern times.

Functions of the Synagogue An inscription from Jerusalem, dating to shortly before 70 c.e., summarizes the functions of ancient synagogues. As translated by Pieter W. van der Horst, it reads: Theodotus, son of Vettenus, priest and head of the synagogue, son of a head of the synagogue, grandson of a head of a synagogue, had this synagogue built for reading of the Law and instruction in the commandments, and also the guest lodgings and the rooms and the water systems for the accommodation of those who come from abroad and need [accommodation]. [This synagogue] was founded by his ancestors, the [ten] elders, and Simonides.

Reading the Law, giving instruction in the Commandments, and providing hotel accommodations for visitors are the three main purposes of this synagogue. One notable omission in the inscription is any mention of prayer. It will be useful to look briefly at each of these purposes.

Reading the Law (or Torah) is the first function Theodotus identified for his synagogue. It is striking that the Torah shrine is one of the few elements in common among all ancient synagogues from the Mediterranean 54

world. It also forms one of the strongest links between ancient and modern synagogues. Evidence from the Christian Bible suggests that Torah reading in the synagogue was accompanied by reading from the prophets as early as the first century. The Book of Acts (13:13–15) records that the apostle Paul was invited to speak in the synagogue “after the reading of the law and the prophets.” Moreover, the Gospel of Luke (4:16–21) describes Jesus in a synagogue in Nazareth, where he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

Thus, from at least the first century, reading from the Torah and the prophets formed a regular activity at the synagogue, just as it does today.

Figure 34. Lion in a Medallion. Attributed to Hammam Lif, Tunisia. First to second century c.e. Stone, 21 5 ⁄ 16 inches (54.1 cm) diameter. Brooklyn Museum. Museum Collection Fund, 05.32

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In fact, by about 100 c.e., the Mishnah, the earliest Jewish commentary on the Hebrew Bible, discusses a cycle of readings of the Torah in the synagogue. There remained disagreements about the correct order of the readings that were settled much later, and there were disagreements over which readings were appropriate for particular holidays. Nevertheless, the idea of reading the Law in a set order was already established by the end of the first century.

The Mishnah also addressed the problem of reading the Torah in Hebrew in congregations in which no one was literate in Hebrew, incidentally suggesting that the concept of the quorum (minyan) was already known. A passage from the Tosefta, a supplement to the Mishnah, suggests that if there is only one person in the congregation able to read Hebrew, it is permissible for only one person to read from the Law. This at least implies that a larger number of readers was closer to the rule (today, ten adult males are required to read from the Torah).

A lack of readers literate in Hebrew would also raise the question of proper translation. For the majority of those congregations in which either Aramaic, Greek, or Latin was the commonly spoken language, provisions were made for translating the Hebrew text during the course of the reading.

In the Mishnah, the Rabbis advise that each reader should read no fewer than three verses. In doing so, he should read to the translator only one verse at a time in the Torah, but up to three verses at a time in the prophets.

Furthermore, in the prophets the reader may skip verses, “so that the translator does not have to stop,� but in the Torah it is not permitted to skip verses of a portion.

Thus a prescribed cycle of Torah readings, controlled by rules of quorum and translation, was already in place by the end of the first century.

However, this is not to say that the Jews of Naro would have necessarily been aware of these rules, even four hundred years after their formulation. Synagogues were not under the authority of the Rabbis even in Late Antiquity. Synagogues constructed in this period rarely even followed the Rabbinic law that mandates that the buildings face Jerusalem. Though ultimately Rabbinic Judaism triumphed in the synagogue, this was a development of the eighth century and later. The synagogues of Late Antiquity often followed an independent, localized course.

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It is important to keep those local circumstances in mind in considering the Hammam Lif mosaics. In the ancient synagogue, the Hebrew of the Law could be translated into one of the numerous local languages found in the Mediterranean world, just as, in the iconography of the synagogue mosaics, Jewish ideas could sometimes be “translated” into local pagan motifs.

Instruction was another important component of the early synagogue’s functions. Philo of Alexandria (20 b.c.e.–50 c.e.), a Jewish philosopher trained in the Greek tradition, stressed the importance of study among those functions.

He believed that the majority of time spent in synagogues on the Sabbath was occupied in contemplating philosophy, knowledge, and nature. He wrote, “For what are the houses of prayer in every city but schools of insight,

Figure 35. Border with Floral Design (detail). From Egypt. Fifth to sixth century c.e. Wool and linen, 2 3 ⁄ 8 x 11 15 ⁄ 16 inches (6.1 x 30.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Pratt Institute, 41.812

courage, good sense, justice, piety, holiness, and every other quality by which duties to man and God are discerned and performed?” Philo clearly hoped to present the synagogue to his Greek-speaking audience as a pedagogic institution on a par with Greek schools of philosophy.

It is impossible to know whether the mosaics on the sanctuary floor were used pedagogically. Certainly, they illustrate contemporaneous concerns with the destruction of Jerusalem and hopes for the coming of the Messiah that are found in prayers of the same period.

Notably absent from Theodotus’s list of synagogue functions is prayer. Yet the synagogue today is primarily a place to pray, and the modern observer would expect prayer to be included in a list of synagogue functions.

Prayer in Theodotus’s time, approximately 70 c.e., differed greatly from modern Jewish practice: it was modeled on the ritual sacrifices per57

formed in the Temple in Jerusalem. But now, words of praise would be offered, rather than slaughtered animals. These prayers also specifically requested the restoration of the Temple, a theme implied also in the sanctuary mosaic.

Prayers arose in small, like-minded groups of Jews, called chavura, as well as in the synagogues. The chavura prayers were developed around meals, feast days, and life-cycle celebrations. Passover seders, blessings over food, and grace after meals all derive from this period.

In the period from about 200 to 700 c.e., when the Naro synagogue flourished, there was no monolithic rabbinate that could enforce its will on Jewish communities. The evidence of prayer that survives is local, stemming from ancient Judea, Babylonia, and Egypt. No texts are attested from Roman North Africa. Of the prayers that do survive, some were incorporated into the written prayer book, first produced in Babylon in 757 c.e.

One element of prayer that existed as early as 200 c.e. but is still familiar to Jews today was the blessing. Both the short blessing formula and the long blessing formula are attested in ancient times. The short blessing begins with the phrase, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who …” followed by mention of one of God’s acts, such as making peace. The long blessing formula may or may not begin with the short blessing formula, but ends with, “Blessed are You who …” and then mentions the main theme of the prayer. These prayers might have been recited in the Naro synagogue.

Two other prayers basic to today’s synagogue service are the Shema and the Tefillah. Both were known in Late Antiquity and might have been recited in the Naro synagogue. Yet there were two distinct strands of tradition in reciting these prayers. The more familiar strand is didactic, understanding the prayers as ways of describing God and his blessings. On the other hand, both Jewish and Christian Gnostics, best known from Egypt, used prayer to achieve a trance-like state and thus join with the heavenly hosts described by the prophet Isaiah.

The language of these two prayers was not yet fixed, however. Only the order of the Eighteen Blessings of the Tefillah was established at this time. There was considerable variation in the actual words used in the long blessings.

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In those places where evidence survives for the years between 200 to 700 c.e., there was no prayer book. The prayers that survive combine mystical expressions with didactic descriptions of God. A great change came with the prayer book compiled by Rabbi Amram of Babylonia in the eighth century. This prayer book was adopted in the Jewish Diaspora in Europe of the time, and thus the descendents of European Jews inherited it in modern times. There was also a separate Palestinian tradition in Palestine and in Egypt, preserved in the Cairo Genizah. It is not possible to know whether the Jews of Naro adopted this prayer book at the time.

The content of these prayers is familiar to Jews today. The prayer called the Shema (“Hear”) perhaps goes back to the first century. Its theme is God’s unity as creator of light and darkness, revealer of Torah, and redeemer from Egyptian bondage. Creation and final deliverance at the end of time are thus linked in prayer, as they are linked in the central panels of the Naro synagogue mosaics.

The Tefillah (“Prayer”), sometimes called the Eighteen Blessings, was also eschatological in theme. It included either eighteen or nineteen blessings in the form of petitions for insight that lead to repentance and salvation, healing the sick, restoring the fertility of Israel, returning of the exiles, reestablishment of the Jewish justice system, punishment of heretics, rewarding the righteous, rebuilding Jerusalem, and bringing the Messiah. All of these themes fit comfortably with the themes identified in the Naro synagogue floor. But no direct line can be drawn between this prayer and the synagogue floor mosaic. The contents of the prayers for Jewish Roman North Africa have not been preserved.

The art found in ancient synagogues suggests which holidays must have been celebrated in them. The representations of the shofar, lulav, and ethrog suggest that Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Sukkot were observed in the Diaspora synagogues. In the synagogue of Dura Europos in modern-day Syria, there are also representations of the Purim story told in the Book of Esther. Passover was celebrated on 14 Nissan, its date in the Aramaic (Jewish) calendar. In fact, the church father John Chrysostom could still complain in the year 380 c.e. that Christians were trying to celebrate Easter, too, on 14 Nissan.

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In addition, Theodotus tells us that the synagogue provided hotel facilities for visitors. That meals were served in the synagogues is indicated by the presence of ovens in the synagogues of Ostia in Italy and Stobi in Macedonia. A copy of the Birkat Ha-Mazon (or grace after meals) was found in the Dura Europos synagogue.

Synagogues also served for Jews some of the same purposes that pagan temples served for their respective worshippers. They were, for example, the venue for the formal emancipation of slaves. Like other Roman temples, the synagogue was a place of asylum, healing illness, and the swearing of oaths.

Administrative Organization of a Synagogue The inscription in room B of the Naro synagogue (Figure 36) mentions that Asterius, patron of the floor of that room, is the son of the archisynagogos.

The presence of this title in the floor inscription suggests that the Naro synagogue congregation employed the same kinds of titles preserved elsewhere, primarily in Rome, in its administrative organization.

Figure 36. Asterius Inscription from Hammam Lif (detail of Figure 2)

The titles of the officials in the ancient synagogue are preserved in Greek. Even in Naro, where the congregation spoke Latin, the building was called a synagogue, derived from a Greek word, and the head of the synagogue was the archisynagogos, also a Greek word. In synagogue inscriptions, the archisynagogos is often identified as being in charge of financial arrangements and is often a donor to the synagogue, as was Asterius. It is unclear whether the archisynagogos also had religious responsibilities. He or she might have led the reading or designated the reader during the service.

There was also a gerousia (council) that was headed by the archigerousia. This council probably had responsibility for raising funds to be sent to the patriarch in Jerusalem, for the administration of worship services, and 60

for communal decision-making including judicial functions. An elected board was called the archontes. The relationship between the council and the board is not clear. The congregation also often had a scribe (grammateus), a caretaker (phrontistes), and a sexton (hyperetes). The prostates represented the congregation to the community government.

Services were led by the super orans (cantor), who seems to have had responsibility for the spondilla, a flute player. Priests and teachers are also mentioned in the inscriptions. Rabbis, however, are mentioned only twice in thousands of inscriptions from the period, both times in Italy. Finally, Latinspeaking congregations also knew a pater (father) or mater (mother) of the synagogue, a financial patron.

Women in the Synagogue The position of women in the ancient synagogue differs greatly from the role that Rabbinic Judaism of the same period assigns to them. Rabbinic Judaism allotted women three responsibilities: to light candles at the beginning of the Sabbath, to burn a piece of dough prior to baking bread, and to observe the requirements of ritual purity during and after menstruation. The Rabbis assigned women no other cultic or liturgical role.

Inscriptions from ancient synagogues, however, paint a different picture.

Women participated fully in the life of the synagogue. They were a recognized and accepted presence. There is no evidence in favor of segregated seating of men and women in ancient times as is true today in orthodox practice, and there is some evidence in favor of mixed seating. The church father John Chrysostom, in fact, ridiculed the Jews of Antioch because men and women prayed together in the synagogue. There is no reason to think that Antioch was atypical. Indeed, it is nearly certain that segregated seating was not introduced until the medieval period.

Scholars have disagreed on the scope of women’s liturgical role in the synagogue. Much depends on the nature of the liturgical role assigned to the archisynagogos, or head of the synagogue. There were some women who acted as archisynagogos, and they would have played whatever liturgical role the male archisynagogos played.

Women could also accept other leadership roles in the synagogue.

Some scholars have suggested that the situation varied according to the extent of women’s leadership in the surrounding society. Thus in Asia Minor, 61

Figure 37. Haloed Head of a Woman. From Egypt. Sixth century c.e. Wool and linen, 9 7â „ 16 x 9 7â „ 16 inches (24 x 24 cm).

Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Pratt Institute, 42.438.4

where women were commonly leaders in the pagan cults, Jewish women also played a larger role. Among the women buried in the Jewish catacombs of Rome are not only an archisynagogos, but a member of the gerousia and the founder of a synagogue (archegissa).

Finally, independently wealthy women certainly played an important role as patrons. Julia of Naro, who gave to her synagogue the sanctuary floor featured in this book, was hardly an isolated case. Between one quarter and one third of the donors to synagogues in the Diaspora were women.

Clearly, then, the Rabbinic sources do not describe the realities of social life in the Diaspora for Jewish women.

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Conclusion Archaeological investigations of the synagogue as an institution since 1883 have created a much more complex picture of Jewish life at the end of the Roman Empire than can be gleaned from the textual sources alone. Religious texts, the information that survived without interruption from antiquity, naturally emphasize a religious way of life prescribed by authority. Archaeology, and the inscriptions discovered through archaeology, however, reveals other concerns and a broader picture of ancient life. Though some people must have been religious in the way the Rabbis described, many ordinary Jews— such as Julia, Asterius, and other members of the Naro congregation—were well integrated into Late Antique culture.

Moreover, although Roman legal authorities, intent on Christianizing the cities and towns as early as the fifth century, tried to ban synagogues, this attempt was largely unsuccessful until much later. The synagogue may have been officially banned from the cities, yet the authorities’ need to repeat the ban later on indicates their inability to enforce this law effectively. At least until the early sixth century, when the Naro synagogue floor was created, Jews continued to live in towns and build and remodel their synagogue buildings.

The sanctuary floor also illustrates the position of many Jews as acculturated Romans. The members of the synagogue maintained a body of beliefs distinct from their Christian and pagan neighbors, yet even these Jewish beliefs were expressed through the symbolic vocabulary of the Roman world, and in the medium of mosaic, a typically Roman technique. Depicting menorahs on the sanctuary floor certainly marked the floor as a Jewish work of art; but the individual elements and the overall compositional device of the surrounding inhabited scroll were largely Roman in inspiration.

The Jews of Naro were further entwined with the local community not only by the use of Latin in all three inscriptions in the synagogue floor but, presumably, by its use in their daily lives. Speaking Latin links the Jews of Naro as well to other, smaller Jewish communities in Ostia, Brescia, and Capua, where the majority of Jewish inscriptions were in Latin.

On these matters and others, the accidental discovery of the Naro synagogue helped to broaden the historical account of Late Antiquity. It opened up a valuable source of knowledge that continues to enrich our understanding today.

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Notes to the Text

Page 11

i n the catalogue of the Bardo…: C. de La Blanchère and P. Gauckler, Catalogue du Musée Alaoui (Paris: Ernst Leroux, 1897), p. 12.

Page 30

Rabbi Ashi of the fourth century wrote …: Babylonian Talmud, Moed Kata, 25b; English translation, Epstein, The Talmud, p. 160.

Page 12

Renan’s article and translations …: Ernest Renan, “Les Mosaïques de Hammam Lif,” Revue archéologique 1 (1883), p. 158.

Page 30

“ The Holy One, blessed be he …”: Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra, 75a; English translation, Epstein, The Talmud, p. 364.

Page 13

David Kaufmann and Salomon Reinach … debated …: David Kaufmann, “Études d’archéologie juive, I: La Synagogue du Hammam Lif, ” Revue d’études juives 13 (1886), pp. 46–61.

Salomon Reinach, “Notes sur la synagogue d’Hammam el Lif,” Revue d’études juives 13 (1886), pp. 217–23.

Page 30

“Dolphins are fruitful and multiply …”: Babylonian Talmud, Bekoroth, 8a; English translation, Epstein, The Talmud, p. 47.

Page 35

A drawing of this mosaic panel appeared …: Ernest Renan, “La Mosaïque de Hammam Lif: Nouvelles Observations,” Revue archéologique 3 (1884), pl. IX.

Page 54

“ Theodotus, son of Vettenus …”: As translated in Pieter W. van der Horst, “Was the Synagogue a Place of Sabbath Worship before 70 c.e.?,” in Steven Fine, ed., Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction During the Greco-Roman Period (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 19.

Page 56

p assage from the Tosefta …: Tosefta Megillah 3(4) 12−13.

Page 16

a n individual could not be accused of idolatry …: Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, 61 B, 62a b; English translation in Isidore Epstein, The Talmud (London, Soncino Press, 1935), pp.

419, 423, 425.

Page 20

“In the days of Rabbi Abun …”: Avodah Zarah 3,3, 42d; quoted in Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 588.

Page 26

Erwin R. Goodenough has suggested …: Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the GrecoRoman Period, vol. 2 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), pp. 89−100.

Page 56

In the Mishnah …: Megillah 4:4.

Page 57

Page 29

“ Men are compared with fishes …”: Babylonian Talmud, Abodah Zarah, 3b; English translation, Epstein, The Talmud, pp. 11 ff.

Philo of Alexandria … wrote …: Moses 2:16; quoted in Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, p. 144.

Page 59

Page 29

“But we, being little fishes…”: Tertullian, De Baptismo 1; translated in Ernest Evans, Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism (Cambridge: University Printing House, 1964), p. 5.

J ohn Chrysostom … could still complain …: Adversus Iudaeos I, I 844; quoted in Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, p. 218.

Page 61

John Chrysostom … ridiculed …: Adversus Iudaeos 3:1, 3:2; quoted in Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, p. 474.

Further Reading Goodenough, Erwin R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. 13 vols. New York: Pantheon Books, 1953−68.

Kraemer, Ross Shepard. Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.

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Chronology

The Historical Context of the Brooklyn Mosaics 815 b.c.e.

Phoenicians found the city of Carthage in present-day Tunisia.

753 b.c.e.

T raditional date of the founding of Rome.

536 b.c.e.

C onstruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

510 b.c.e.

The Roman Republic is established.

264–146 b.c.e.

T he Punic Wars are waged between Rome and Carthage. In 146 c.e., Carthage is destroyed and the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus brings North Africa under Roman control.

56–62 b.c.e.

31 b.c.e.–17 c.e.

T he Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus conquers western Asia, including Jerusalem, making Judea a Roman province.

O ctavian reigns as the first Roman emperor, taking the Imperial name Augustus.

54–68 c.e.

R eign of the Roman emperor Nero.

Persecution of Christians begins.

70 c.e.

T he First Jewish Revolt fails and the Second Temple of Jerusalem is destroyed by the Roman general Titus.

After Titus succeeds his father, Vespasian, as emperor, the Arch of Titus (circa 81 c.e.) is built in the Roman Forum to commemorate his conquest of Jerusalem.

135 c.e.

c. 200 c.e.

D uring the reign of the emperor Hadrian, the Bar Kochba Revolt of the Jewish people against Rome ends in defeat. Jews are exiled from Judea and dispersed throughout the Empire.

ing what subsequent Jewish tradition will consider legitimate. Beginning of the Rabbinical Era, which will end in the Middle Ages.

312 c.e. The emperor Constantine the Great converts to Christianity, and the persecution of Christians ends. Constantine subsequently founds the city of Constantinople as capital of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire. c. 400–500 c.e. Compilation of Jewish legal commentaries called the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, which serve as additional sources for legitimate Jewish tradition in modern times.

429–439 c.e. The Vandals, a Germanic tribe, invade Roman North Africa and conquer Carthage.

476 c.e. The Germanic general Odacar (or Odovacar) overthrows the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus . c. 500–600 c.e . The sanctuary mosaic featured in Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire is added to the Naro synagogue in what is now Hammam Lif, Tunisia.

533 c.e. Byzantine Romans led by General Belisarius reconquer Roman North Africa.

648–669 c.e. Muslims conquer Roman North Africa.

700 c.e. End of the period called Late Antiquity.

B eginning of the period historians call Late Antiquity, marked by the breakdown of orderly government in the Empire and a series of civil wars.

C ompilation of Jewish legal commentary known as the Mishnah, establish-

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire, organized by the Brooklyn Museum from its collections and on view October 28, 2005−July 16, 2006 Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire was made possible in part by the Brooklyn Museum’s Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Exhibition Fund. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Martucci, Meridian Capital Group, the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, the Charles and Mildred Schnurmacher Foundation, and Patti Cadby Birch also provided generous support.

Support for this publication was provided by an endowment created by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This publication was organized and printed at the Brooklyn Museum Editor: James Leggio Designer: Harold Wortsman Photography: Sarah Kraemer and Dean Brown Digital Pre-Press: John DiClemente Printing: Dominick Prisco and Eddy Trochez Copyright © 2005 Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York 11238-6052 www.brooklynmuseum.org All rights reserved No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the Brooklyn Museum.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brooklyn Museum.

Tree of paradise : Jewish mosaics from the Roman Empire / Edward Bleiberg. p. cm.

Catalog of exhibition organized by the Brooklyn Museum from its collections and on view Oct. 28, 2005–July 16, 2006.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-87273-155-3 (alk. paper) 1. Hammam Lif Synagogue (Tunisia) 2. Pavements, Mosaic—Tunisia—Exhibitions. 3. Tunisia—Antiquities— Exhibitions. 4. Jewish art and symbolism—Exhibitions. 5. Excavations (Archaeology)—Tunisia—Exhibitions.

6. Brooklyn Museum—Exhibitions. I. Bleiberg, Edward, 1951- II. Title.

NA4690.B76 2005 738.5’2’093973--dc22 2005011909

Frontispiece: Date Palm Tree (Tree of Paradise) (detail of Figure 17) Page 4: Menorah (detail of Figure 16)