Cock-a-Doodle-doo! Giant Red Rooster Mosaic Finds Home in ROM’s New Byzantine Gallery

Planners and construction workers are hard at work building new Byzantine and Roman galleries at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto Canada.

The galleries will be completed some time in 2011. For now I thought I would show a picture of a key artefact that will be featured in the Byzantine Gallery. Its a mosaic that dates to the time when the city of Constantinople was being founded (AD 325-350).

Curator Paul Denis said that its 12 feet by 20 feet and will be a key part of the Byzantine gallery. He added: its got geometric patterns around the border and then it has baskets and fruit, and then in the centre it has a rooster surrounded by a vine scroll.

Clearly Dated

Archeaologists didn’t have much trouble dating the artefact – the clue was in the inscription. The picture above shows a close-up of the inscription. It is written in Greek and reads: (mosaic) was completed on April 15 in the Indiction year 10 in the year 104.

Its interesting how prominently it features on the mosaic right in the centre. In the modern world details like this are in fine print. But in the ancient world, where mosaics must be made by hand, details like this are prominent.

The picture on the left shows a fuller picture of the mosaic. You can seea very ornate geometric pattern on the right hand side. Certainly not something that can be made in a day!