Gnosis (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: Γνῶσις), active c. 300 BC, is the name of the artist signed upon the famous

Stag Hunt Mosaic The Stag Hunt mosaic ( BC) is a mosaic from a wealthy home of the late 4th century BC, the so-called "House of the Abduction of Helen" (or "House of the Rape of Helen"), in Pella, the capital of the Macedonian Kingdom. It bears the signature of th ...

from the 'House of the Abduction of Helen' in

Pella Pella ( el, Πέλλα) is an ancient city located in Central Macedonia, Greece. It is best-known for serving as the capital city of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon, and was the birthplace of Alexander the Great. On site of the ancient cit ...

, capital of the

Macedonian Kingdom Macedonia (; grc-gre, Μακεδονία), also called Macedon (), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by ...

. It is the first known signature ("Gnosis epoesen", i.e. ''Gnosis created'') of a

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 ...

ist and the only artist name surviving on a pebble floor. It is not known whether Gnosis was the mosaic-setter or the painter of the picture which the floor composition probably reproduces. It is also not known if he was a local or an immigrant artist to the Macedonian court.Names constructed with Gnos- are frequently in South and Aegean Greece (se
Γνωσ

Packard Humanities Institute The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) is a non-profit foundation, established in 1987, and located in Los Altos, California, which funds projects in a wide range of conservation concerns in the fields of archaeology, music, film preservation, an ...

. However, Gnosis, as a male personal name, seems to be a

hapax legomenon In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...

.) In the Pella mosaics for the first time use is made of the size of the pebbles and new materials such as semi-precious stones or glass

tessera A tessera (plural: tesserae, diminutive ''tessella'') is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a square, used in creating a mosaic. It is also known as an abaciscus or abaculus. Historical tesserae The oldest known tesserae ...

References

*Mosaics of the Greek and Roman world By Katherine M. D. Dunbabin Page 14 (1999)
Artists biographies artnet.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gnosis (Artist) Mosaic artists Ancient Greek painters Ancient Macedonian artists Ancient Greek artists