The Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a late Hellenistic floor mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

 depicting the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...

 in its passage from Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

 to the Mediterranean. It has a width of 5.85 metres and a height of 4.31 metres and provides the only glimpse into the Roman fascination with Egyptian exoticism in the 1st century BC, both as an early manifestation of the role of Egypt in the European imagination and an example of the genre of "Nilotic landscape

Nilotic landscape

Nilotic landscape is term used to describe artistic representations of landscapes which emulate or are inspired by the Nile river in Egypt. The term was coined to refer primarily to such landscapes created outside of Egypt, especially in the Aegean, though it is occasionally used to refer to scenes...

", with a long iconographic history in Egypt and the Aegean.

Description

The mosaic, with an arch-headed framing that identifies its original location as flooring an apse

Apse

In architecture, the apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome...

 in a grotto

Grotto

A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...

, features detailed depictions of Ptolemaic Greeks, black Ethiopians in hunting scenes, and various animals of the Nile river. It is the earliest Roman depiction of Nilotic scenes, of which several more were uncovered at Pompeii

Pompeii

The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...

. A consensus on the dating of the work is slowly emerging. Paul G. P. Meyboom suggests a date shortly before the reign of Sulla (ca. 100 BC) and treats the mosaic as an early evidence for the spread of Egyptian cults in Italy, where Isis

Isis

Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...

 was syncretised with Fortuna

Fortuna

Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...

. He believes Nilotic scenes were introduced in Rome by Demetrius the Topographer, a Greek artist from Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter invaded Egypt and declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to...

 active ca. 165 BC. Claire Préaux emphasises the "escapist" nature of the fantastic scenery.

Origins

The Nile Mosaic and its companion piece, the Fish Mosaic, were apparently still to be seen in the Italian city of Palestrina

Palestrina

Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...

, ancient Praeneste, in the 15th century. When first noticed shortly before 1507 by Antonio Volsco, a humanist in the circle of Pomponio Leto, the mosaics were still in situ among the vestiges of Sulla's sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia

Fortuna

Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...

. At that time the town was owned by the Colonna family of Rome, whose palazzo in Palestrina occupied a section of the ruins.

The mosaic may have been indicated in a well-known passage in Pliny's Natural History concerning mosaic floors in Italy:
Volsco added that these were "arranged in the pattern of a picture". Maurizio Calvesi, in identifying Francesco Colonna as the author of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing...

, identifies passages in Hypnerotomachia depending on Pliny that were enriched by direct experience of the mosaics themselves.

17th century

In the 17th century, Palestrina passed to the Barberini family, who between 1624 and 1626 removed most of the mosaic from its setting, without recording the overall composition, and, after further movements and damage, put it on exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini

Palazzo Barberini

Palazzo Barberini is a palace in Rome, facing the piazza of the same name in Rione Trevi and is home to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.-History:...

, Palestrina

Palestrina

Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...

, where it remains. The mosaic was restored and repaired on numerous occasions, but careful watercolors of the sections were made for Cassiano dal Pozzo

Cassiano dal Pozzo

Cassiano dal Pozzo was an Italian scholar and patron of arts. The secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, he was an antiquary in the classicizing circle of Rome, and a long-term friend and patron of Nicolas Poussin, whom he supported from his earliest arrival in Rome: Poussin in a letter...

before the initial restoration in the opificio of St. Peter's. Helen Whitehouse's rediscovery of the long-lost watercolors enabled a reconstruction of the surviving segments in a more meaningful way (Whitehouse, although much remains uncertain about the original composition. The mosaic has been a major feature of the Museo Nazionale Prenestino in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, since 1953.

Other sources

• Finley, The Light of the Past, 1965, p. 93.
• C. Roemer, R. Matthews, Ancient Perspectives on Egypt, Routledge Cavendish 2003, pp. 194ff.
• Paul G. P. Meyboom, The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy, Leiden:Brill 1995, pp. 80ff