Geometrical Mosaic Pavements of the Church of Bishop Leontios at Ya'amun (Northern Jordan)

Abstract

In 2001 at the site of Ya'amun in northern Jordan a church was recovered from the Byzantine period, dating to the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century AD, where impressive and well-preserved mosaic pavements were uncovered. One of these bears an inscription mentioning Bishop Leontios, and this building will therefore be referred to as the Church of Bishop Leontios. In this article, the authors endeavour to show that the Ya'amun mosaicists were true masters of their profession. They combined motifs with a long tradition, going back to the early and middle Roman imperial age, with newly created designs that appear here for the first time. The new designs comprise a composite motif of interlocked circles and squares, which was adopted shortly thereafter in the church of Procopius at Gerasa (AD 526). On the other hand, the motif of intersecting circles forming quatrefoils is already found in Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. This study will try to demonstrate the history and the survival of several geometric patterns from the floor mosaics of the Church of Bishop Leontios by comparisons with other examples of the same patterns from Jordan and neighbouring countries, as well as from further afield. A peculiarity of the mosaic floors in the Church of Bishop Leontios is that they are now almost purely geometrical in design as a result of iconoclasm.