Why is Alexandria mapped onto a floor in Late Antique Sepphoris? This talk explores the function of geographic place in Late Antique floor mosaics through a case study of the Sepphoris Nile Festival mosaic. The early fifth-century public building, the Nile Festival House, stood in Sepphoris’s urban center. While mosaic floors originally lined the entire space, the most prominent room contains an elaborate floor of the festival of the flooding of the Nile. Here, architecture transports the viewer to Egypt. The center of the upper register portrays a nilometer, used for measuring the height of the Nile, while the middle register presents Alexandria through its city-gate, lighthouse, and the misnamed Column of Pompey. Through a focus on the Nile Festival mosaic, I explore the role of place depictions on mosaic floors as partaking in the rituals of the broader space to render both a physical and imaginative journey for the viewer

Tuesday, April 5, 2022, 12:00

Room #1719, Eshkol Tower, 17th floor

University of Haifa

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