The Shukhuti mosaic ( ka, შუხუთის მოზაიკა, ''shukhutis mozaika'') is a bath
mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
discovered in 1961 at the village of
Shukhuti Shukhuti ( Georgian: ) is a village community near Lanchkhuti, Guria, Georgia, which includes the villages of Zemo Shukhuti and Kvemo Shukhuti. The area produces limestone, which is used for making lime.
History
The area has been inhabited since ...
,
Guria
Guria ( ka, გურია) is a region (''mkhare'') in Georgia, in the western part of the country, bordered by the eastern end of the Black Sea. The region has a population of 113,000 (2016), with Ozurgeti as the regional capital.
Geography ...
, western
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
. It dates from the 4th-5th century, from the times of the historical entity of
Lazica
Lazica ( ka, ეგრისი, ; lzz, ლაზიკა, ; grc-gre, Λαζική, ; fa, لازستان, ; hy, Եգեր, ) was the Latin name given to the territory of Colchis during the Roman/Byzantine period, from about the 1st centur ...
.
Description
Equal to the size of the mosaic floors discovered in the bath Shukhuti's
apodyterium
In ancient Rome, the apodyterium (from grc, ἀποδυτήριον "undressing room") was the primary entry in the public bath
Public baths originated when most people in population centers did not have access to private bathing facilities. T ...
(2.00X3, 50 m). The mosaic-covered area is approximately 50%, which was still under a fifteen-centimeter layer of lime mixed with dapshkhvnil ceramics, and scattered cobblestones. The mosaic was made using the
Opus Tesselatum technique, which is characterized by the use of identical size and shape of cubes. Cubic surfaces have dimensions of about 1 cm. The mosaic is made of the following materials:
# black sandstone
# white, yellow, lime green colors
#
Andesite
Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predo ...
, dark red, sometimes brown
# pale red ceramics.
The design is of
square
In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90- degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ...
s and
eight-pointed star
In geometry, an octagram is an eight-angled star polygon.
The name ''octagram'' combine a Greek numeral prefix, '' octa-'', with the Greek suffix ''-gram''. The ''-gram'' suffix derives from γραμμή (''grammḗ'') meaning "line".
Detai ...
s.
References
{{Reflist
Mosaics
4th-century artefacts
Roman sites in Georgia (country)
Buildings and structures in Guria
Lazica