Saturday, October 30, 2010

Giant Mosaic in Jericho (that you can't see)

An 8th-century CE Islamic palace in Jericho had a bath house with a mosaic floor that measured over 9000 square feet. This floor was uncovered by archaeologists in the 1930s, but has been covered up again for most of the years since then, to protect it. No one can come up with the $2 million it would cost to put a roof over it to make a proper display. A part of it was recently uncovered and put on display for one week, as part of a celebration of Jericho's supposed (and kind of arbitrary) 10,000th anniversary.
In this article, you can see a pretty good closeup picture of the mosaic: http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/jerichos-massive-1200-year-old-mosaic-on-display.html
In this one, from an Israeli source, you can learn about the problem of displaying it:
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/massive-ancient-mosaic-unveiled-in-jericho-1.318261
And in this one, from the BBC, you can see a video of the site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11516299.

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