Nearly two millennia ago, a wealthy Roman commissioned an intricate, multicolored floor mosaic that depicted two beloved household animals: a cat named Emerald and a dog named Ocean. The mosaic was a key feature of a villa, which archaeologists recently unearthed from beneath the ancient city of Adramytteion on Turkey's Aegean coast.
Within the Roman villa, which has been dated to the late second to third centuries A.D., archaeologists discovered three halls surrounding a central atrium. In one room, which likely functioned as the villa's main reception hall, archaeologists found a colorful mosaic with 15 separate panels depicting living and mythological creatures.
In a study forthcoming in the Journal of Mosaic Research, archaeologist Hüseyin Özgen, head of the Adramytteion research team at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, wrote that the 15 panels are centered around what appears to be a depiction of Read Entire Article
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