Report·PU-Mu 1050, Box 3, folder 17·c. 1955

Kourion Complex Palace (Mosaics) Fales, c. 1955 (1 of 2)De C. Fales (probably)

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Typed and handwritten in English. Every line is transcribed, and the text sits beside the scan.

Scan 88 of report PU-Mu 1050, Box 3, folder 17 (Kourion Complex Palace (Mosaics) Fales, c. 1955 (1 of 2)), typed and handwritten in English. The transcription follows.

Scan: Penn Museum Archives, Philadelphia, PU-Mu 1050, Box 3, folder 17, Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

Unnumbered pageScan 88 of 97

87

aqua parit,id suscipit sancta Ecclesia et Domino sistit. In [handwritten: 595] the mystic baptismal rites of Severus of Antioch and of [handwritten: 596] the Jacobites, the same passage occurs. Now the six youthful, [handwritten: 597 Jacob of Edessa] has been contrasted with the [handwritten: 'Απόλλωνις] graceful form of [handwritten: 'Απόλλωνις] firmer appearance of [handwritten: Ζωπηρία 598 'Απολλωνις] sturdier, firmer appearance of [handwritten: Ζωπηρία 598]: [handwritten: 'Απόλλωνις] represents the Church as a bride, this is the geschmuckt ist in ihr der Taufbrunnen wie eine verherrlichte Braut of the [handwritten: 599] Syrian Jacobite ceremony, quoted above, whereas [handwritten: Ζωπηρία] is the mother who nourishes and protects her young.

The four animals in the vestibule may well represent those whom the Churches nourishes and sustains. One of their common denominators is eating. They are, thus, analogous in action and position to a number of animals depicted in baptisteries, to [handwritten: those] the animals in the small arches between the [handwritten: 600] windows of the Orthodox baptistery in Ravenna, to the stags and sheep in the baptistery of Giovanni San Giovanni in [handwritten: 601] Fonte in Naples, to the birds in the circular border surrounding the sky or heaven ofx the same baptistery and to those in the borders around the scenes from the New Testa-[handwritten: 602] ment, and to the two pairs of birds, one on either side of [handwritten: 603] the font in the chapel-baptistery on Mt. Nebo. Most of these animals are shown eating or about to eat or drink. That these animals have a religious significance is in part indicated by the stags which in the baptistery in Ravenna are looking up to a jar to drink and which, in that at Naples,

65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain

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