Description: Left side and lower part of a mosaic floor panel
depicting a scene which involved two human figures,
a crater, a panther and probably a thyrsus, within a border of geometrical patterns set in squares.
Text: Mosaic lettering in what survives of the upper part.
Letters: Second-third centuries CE; square omega; cursive omega.
Date: Second to third centuries CE
Findspot:
Berenike,
Omar Mukhtar Street, Casa di Leone; found in 1932.
Original location: Unknown.
Last recorded location:
Findspot (1932)
English translation
Translation by: Editors
To the . . . good fortune . . .
Commentary
The lost mosaic is probably from the dining room of a house known conventionally, but without adequate grounds, as the Casa di Leone (see below). The photographs have been thoroughly studied by Michaelides who has argued that, in so far as one can judge from them, it should be dated in the early third century AD, not the fifth, and interpreted as presenting a standard Dionysiac scene, not one of Iolaos and Hebe as proposed by Stucchi. The date may be early third century.
Line 1 starts with the definite article, providing some kind of dedication
Line 3 suggests εὐτυχῶς or some part of the verb εὐτυχέω.
In line 4 of the text the vacat is filled by the arm of the probable Dionysus. Comparison with other texts on mosaics suggests that these letters are unlikely to be from the house-owner’s name (as proposed by Stucchi).
Bibliography: Goodchild, 1954 Frontispiece and 10 (illustration and notes on discovery only); republished Reynolds, 1978, 15, whence SEG 28.1549; Michaelides, 1989, 362-4 and Plate IV, whence Dobias-Lalou, Bulletin Épigraphique, 1990.842; see also Stucchi, 1975, 496.
Text constituted from: Photograph (transcribed by Reynolds).
Images
Fig. 1. View (Department of Antiquities, E. 1727)
Fig. 2. Face (Department of Antiquities, E. 1728)
Fig. 3. Drawing