RT Article
T1 The God Aion in a Mosaic from Nea Paphos (Cyprus) and Graeco-Phoenician Cosmogonies in the Roman East
JF Archiv für Religionsgeschichte
VO 21/22
IS 1
SP 423
OP 447
A1 López-Ruiz, Carolina
LA English
PB De Gruyter
YR 2020
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1743146841
AB This essay offers a new interpretive angle on a fourth-century CE mosaic from Nea Paphos in Cyprus, in which the central panel depicts the god Aion presiding over the contest between Kassiopeia and the Nereids. The mosaic, which has other mythological scenes, two of them focused on Dionysos, has been interpreted in an allegorical Neoplatonic key or else as encrypting an anti-Christian polemic narrative. Here I propose that Aion and the other cosmogonic motifs in the panels, including the birth and triumph of Dionysos, point rather to Orphic and Phoenician cosmogonies, which in turn had a strong impact and reception among Neoplatonists and intellectuals of the Roman and late Roman Levant.
K1 Altertumswissenschaften
K1 Antike Religionsgeschichte
K1 Klassische Altertumswissenschaften
K1 Religionswissenschaften
K1 Theologie und Religion
DO 10.1515/arege-2020-0022