(Ar Rastan) Syrian authorities on Wednesday unveiled a Roman-era mosaic dating from the 4th century AD, among “the rarest” and “most complete in the country”.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
The 1,600-year-old mosaic was discovered in the city of Rastane, in the province of Homs.
It represents a “rare scene”, in which “the details and the names of the Greek kings who participated in the Trojan war clearly appear”, declared to AFP Hammam Saad, director of excavations and archaeological studies at the Direction General of Antiquities and Museums.
“We don’t have a similar mosaic,” Saad said, adding that the work is “not the oldest” in Syria, but “the most complete and the rarest”.
“The part uncovered so far is 20 meters long and six meters wide,” he explained, pointing out that there are other parts that have not yet been revealed.
This is the ninth mosaic discovered at this site.
A land of multi-millennial civilizations, from the Canaanites to the Umayyads, via the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Syria is full of archaeological treasures.
Some sites suffered destruction during the war that began in 2011.
In the city of Homs, the Oum al-Zinar church was burned and the Khalid Ibn al-Walid mosque damaged, while in Rastane mosaics were stolen.