Elephants agog in the synagogue
This mosaic of a wide-eyed elephant was discovered by archaeologists in a fifth-century synagogue in Huqoq, Galilee. It is part of a scene where a white-haired Jewish leader confronts a general in Greek garb and his troops, including elephants. There has been a lot of debate about exactly who the two central figures are: was the warrior Alexander? Nero? Are they just symbolic and don't represent any particular incident? To add to the mystery, synagogues from this period rarely depicted non-Biblical events. Jodi Magness, who led the dig that uncovered the mosaic, argued that the elephants show this scene was not Biblical, since elephants do not obviously occur in the Bible (although ivory and some otherwise unidentified big beasts do crop up).
Whatever it depicts, the scene seems to suggest that there was a happy ending and that the war elephants were not deployed! Material: mosaic Date: late 4th or early 5th century AD Origin: Huqoq, Galilee Image source (x)
