Description:
Mosaic floor consisting mainly of roughly square panels which contain
representations of birds (including a peacock), fish, animals, flowers and baskets of fruit, the
panels being divided from each other by a two-strand guilloche.
Text: Mosaic lettering, contained in a rectangular panel
(w:
4.20 x h:
0.18),
running across the north end of the mosaic, on the threshhold. This floor was overlaid by the later mosaic,
T.16.
Letters: 0.14-0.15; lunate epsilon, sigma and omega; probably a leafy branch at the end.
Date: Fourth to fifth centuries CE
Findspot:
Taucheira:
Palace Complex in the apsed hall
of a possible baptistry or chapel; found by Fathi Mohammed Ali el Abidi
Original location: Findspot.
Last recorded location:
Findspot.
English translation
Translation source: Reynolds-Ward-Perkins-Goodchild, 2003
Your entry (?coming) is peace, high priest, who sees (this).
Commentary
Christian texts from doorways like this one are rare in Libya, but in Syria, where they are quite common, they often invoke a blessing on those passing in or out with goodwill. Here only one entry is mentioned, and the text is, as Dobias-Lalou observed, an adaptation of a question put in several forms to strangers in Old Testament narratives, and specifically of the form in which it is put to the prophet Samuel by the elders of Bethlehem: Kings 1 (1 Samuel) 16.4: εἰρήνη ἡ εἴσοδός σου, ὁ βλέπων. For further discussion see Christian Monuments (cited above), 220-221
Bibliography: Bentaher-Dobias-Lalou, 1999, whence Dobias-Lalou, Bulletin Épigraphique, 2000.746bis, SEG 49.2364; Reynolds-Ward-Perkins-Goodchild, 2003, 218.3, whence Dobias-Lalou, Bulletin Épigraphique, 2004.457, SEG 53.2071.1. Mentioned Kenrick, 2013, 58
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
None available (2020).