Scene from the Nile Mosaic of Palestrina

Around the year 1600, a mosaic floor with images of Nilotic landscapes, hunts, and numerous animals came to light in an apsidal room in the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia in Palestrina. The floor was not only well-preserved but quite large (length: 4.35 m; width: 6.87 m); so when Cardinal Andrea Peretti removed the greatest parts of it from the building between 1624 and 1626, it had to be split into multiple pieces. Several parts of the mosaic remained in situ. Moreover, the mosaic’s removal (which took place before any drawings were made of its original state) was only the beginning of its eventful life to come. Several of the dismembered pieces remained in Palestrina in the Palazzo Baronale and were later acquired by the Barberini along with the Palazzo itself. Other sections went to Rome: one was gifted to Francesco de Medici during his visit to Rome in 1628. The Berlin section, depicting a banquet under a pergola, circulated from the collection of the scholar A. F. Gori in 1747 to that of the margravine Wilhelmine of Bayreuth, sister of Frederick the Great. After her death in 1758, the fragment went to Potsdam and resided in the “Antique Temple” of Sanssouci until 1797. Finally, with the foundation of the Altes Museum at the Lustgarten, the piece arrived in the Antikensammlung.
The pieces that stayed in Rome were reassembled in 1640. The Berlin fragment, missing from the ensemble, was substituted with a copy. In 1952 the mosaic had to be reassembled once again after suffering bombing damage in World War II. Today it is on view in the Palazzo Barberini, the museum at Palestrina.
The Berlin fragment depicts a feast under a pergola. Two groups of banqueters drink and make music on an island in the Nile, lying on boxy klinai topped with cushions. Luxuriant vegetation signals that this is the season of the Nile flood. This scene was located in the lower portion of the mosaic floor, either just left of center or on the right. The floor was divided into two zones by the nature of its component scenes, rendered in extremely fine mosaic technique: one zone probably depicted Egypt, the other Ethiopia. Opinions remain divided on the interpretation and dating of the mosaic. The date depends on the complicated construction history of the sanctuary around 100 BC. An illustrated travel journal, probably in the form of a scroll, may have served as a model for the mosaicist. In the third century BC, Ptolemy II of Egypt mustered an expedition to find rare and unknown animals and bring them back alive to Alexandria. Some forty animal species are represented in the mosaic.
The sanctuary of Fortuna in Palestrina, built in the mid-second century BC, is a masterpiece of ancient architecture in central Italy. The building complex under the sanctuary has been interpreted as a public area, perhaps a forum, which may have contained a space for Isiac cult. The Nile Mosaic occupied the apsidal room in the eastern building, a highly visible and esteemed place in the cityscape.