Floor mosaics found in early Byzantine church – History

A Byzantine-era floor mosaic was discovered in the Church of Saints Constantine and Helena Monastery in Ordu on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Its style and motifs date back to the 5th or 6th century AD. This is the first ancient floor mosaic ever found in the Ordu region.

The extant mosaic consists of geometric and plant patterns in white, black and red tesserae. The main pattern is two chevrons (probably diamonds, as their intersection was later destroyed by construction) flanked by double-edged axes, an important symbol of deities and religious rituals in the ancient Near East. Plant elements include leafy plants, spiky acanthus (the Byzantine version of the more familiar rounded Greco-Roman leaf) and pears.

The double-edged axe, which has been a religious symbol since the proto-Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük (7500-6400 BC), seems to me to have unexpectedly become a decorative element on the floors of Christian monastery churches. I confess that my knowledge of the subject is limited and I cannot think of any other examples. However, Byzantine mosaicists borrowed heavily from ancient Greek and Roman art, and the double-edged axe often appears in statues of the storm gods Zeus and Teshub. The axe, mentioned in the Bible as a tool of God’s power and judgment, is not the only ancient symbol to be transplanted into new religions, although it is not double-headed.

It could also be recycled elements. The mosaic in the overhead view of the whole floor looks a bit motley – the herringbone patterns intersecting the diagonals, and the leafy plant in the center right that cuts into and to the right of it, looks like opus sectile (marble inlay) rather than the inlay style of the rest of the floor. Then again, there may be different levels of flooring that you can’t see in the flat overhead view, at least part of which predates the church. I don’t know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Byzantine monastery was discovered in 2023 during excavations at a site where eight tombs dating back to the Roman Empire were found in 2021. The 2023 excavations found the remains of a later building in the tombs and confirmed that it was a monastery church dedicated to the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena, both of whom are revered as saints in Eastern Christianity. Helena (who made a pilgrimage to Palestine and Syria and left with a collection of ostensible relics of Christ, including his cross, his robes, the nails from his crucifixion, and the ropes that bound him to the cross) is also considered a saint by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.