Even before the Roman conquest of Egypt, scenes depicting typical features of the landscape of Egypt, especially its flora and fauna, were appearing in mosaic pavements in Italy. The earliest surviving, and most celebrated, example of this genre is the Nile mosaic that once formed the pavement of a grotto in an apsidal building adjacent to the temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina (Praeneste), east of Rome (Meyboom 1995). The mosaic (plate 29) depicts the course of the Nile from the highlands of Ethiopia to the Delta at the time of its annual inundation; animals labeled with their Greek names inhabit the rocky terrain of the cataracts, while lower down in the picture, temples and rustic buildings stand on islands of land above the flood waters in the Egyptian Nile valley, with boats of all kinds around. A dating of the mosaic to the last quarter of the second century bc is now generally accepted; the authenticity of its depiction of aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt is unparalleled in later Nilotic scenes, though the evolution of this genre through the first century bc in Italy can be traced in other mosaics that appear to draw on similar sources - the pavement in the House of the Faun at Pompeii showing Nilotic flora and fauna (Tammisto 1997: 364-6, pls. 22-3); and from Rome the fragments of a pavement with boats and ducks (Donati 2000: 160 no.1 and col. pl. on p.70), and the fragmentary scene of visitors watching the feeding of sacred crocodiles on some festive occasion (Donati 1998: 319 no.160 and col. pl. on p. 252). Nothing of this kind has as yet been found in Egypt, but over the course of the same century Nilotic scenes and Egyptianizing motifs began to appear also in Roman wall-painting. Their popularity increased after the Roman conquest of Egypt, but, in a development not dissimilar to the vogue for Chinoiserie creations in eighteenth-century Europe, they also moved away from a credible presentation of the landscape and inhabitants of Egypt to a more amusingly decorative style, centerd on the comic depiction of ‘‘pygmies’’ in a fantastic Nile ambience (corpus of Nilotic scenes: Versluys 2002). No single satisfactory explanation for this genre has been found, though the association of pygmies with the sources of the Nile (Aristotle HA 8.12.596b) and their potential relationship in some scenes to the dwarf gods of Egypt (Whitehouse 1977: 65-8; general review of the question - Meyboom and Versluys 2007) may have been influential factors.
Whether or not the Palestrina mosaic was copied from some composition celebrating the life-giving Nile that already existed in Egypt, a dependence on Ptolemaic sources and the influence of Alexandrian mosaic technology in the creation of such a picturesque pavement (albeit from tesserae that have been identified as local stone types) are manifest, and supported by the increasing evidence of polychrome mosaics of the highest quality in Alexandria by the mid-second century bc. For the existence of Nilotic scenes in Egypt itself, however, the evidence is slight and later in date than the fine examples noted above: fragments of a polychrome mosaic with motifs including fish, birds, and a pygmy against a blue-grey watery background, were retrieved with parts of other pavements from the debris filling a water-basin near the sea at Abuqir (Kanopos) (Daszewski 1985: 136-42 nos 28-37, with a suggested late Ptolemaic or early Roman dating). If they originally paved the floor of some water-related context, this would mirror the common association of Nilotica elsewhere with settings such as baths, summer dining-rooms, and garden features with piped water. A solitary pygmy carrying amphorae on a yoke forms the center-piece to one of the “shield’’-type mosaics (Parlasca 1975: 368 pl. H). More picturesque is the small fragment of polychrome mosaic depicting a pygmy punting a boat through a marsh landscape (Daszewski 1985: 167-8 no. 44, suggesting a late Ptolemaic dating; Tammisto 1997: 366-7, pl.24 fig. NS3, 1, querying date); allegedly from el-Amarna, it is more likely to have formed part of a pavement somewhere in Hermopolis Magna, on the opposite side of the river, also the site of one of the bath pavements found in situ (Bailey 1991: 54). The only substantially preserved Nilotic mosaic yet found in Egypt is one of those discovered at Thmuis, a large (though incomplete) pavement depicting a family dining under an awning while a dancer entertains them; around them the marshy landscape is peopled with pygmies in encounters with the typical birds and beasts of the Nile (figure 44.3; Breccia 1932: 65, 101, pl. 52; color detail illustrated in Empereur 2000: 18 fig. 22). Prefaced with an inscription conveying good wishes, the mosaic is likely to have formed the center-piece of a dining-room pavement, and presents an Egyptian adaptation of the hunt-and-picnic scene found
Figure 44.3 Polychrome mosaic pavement from Thmuis, Alexandria GRM inv. 21641: festive banquet in a Nilotic landscape, third century ad. After Breccia 1932.
Elsewhere in later Roman mosaics (for typical third - to fourth-century examples, see Dunbabin 1999: 131-3, 135 fig. 137, 142-3 with fig. 147). In setting this scene at the quintessential time of celebratory feasting in Egypt - the coming of the inundation - it follows thematically in the line of the Palestrina mosaic, but the relationship between Ptolemaic Egypt and the beginning of the Nilotic genre still awaits clearer definition which may come from further discoveries in Egypt.
World History
