courtyard Complete

ID: 184

Building type: unknown

Context:

monastery

Site:

Inscriptions:

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Description:

Designated as no. 9 on the plan, the central mosaic panel is a polychrome square measuring 3.00 × 3.00 m, now in a poor state of preservation. Its decoration is restrained and geometric, with a colored field at the core. The outermost surround consists of a white-tessera border carrying an alternating sequence of bud and square motifs. Beyond this, a 12 cm-wide frame, overall 7.10 × 5.95 m, is composed of five courses of red and white tesserae. Between the marginal zones and the colored center, two bands of notched square motifs intervene. The principal frame is articulated as a guilloche of red–white and brown–white strands outlined in black; flanking this braid on both sides are symmetrically arranged rows of brown and black tesserae together with two rows of red tesserae. This panel occupies the middle of a rectangular courtyard, 10.00 × 8.50 m, approached through a vestibule. The courtyard floor is laid in a coarse white mosaic with a simple design, at roughly 25 tesserae per square decimeter. Bibliography: - Kloner, A., and Hirschfeld, Y. “Khirbet el-Qasr — A Byzantine Fort with an Olive Press in the Judean Desert.” In Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies, Michael Avi-Yonah Memorial Volume. Jerusalem, 1987: 132–141. - Magen, Y., Har-Even, B., and Sharukh, I. “A Roman Tower and a Byzantine Monastery at Khirbet El-Qasr.” In Christians and Christianity IV — Churches and Monasteries in Judea, ed. N. Carmin. Jerusalem, 2012: 247–298.