The following article is a description of the work of University Professor ,Werner Jobst in Istanbul. We are pleased that both he and the academic restorer Mag. Christian Gurtner are regular guests of St. George whenever they work on the project. It goes without saying that St. George has been helping them with their work by the provision of infrastructure wherever possible.

After 14 years of scientific research and restoration the palace mosaic of Constantinople will soon be open to the public. The Austrian Academy of Sciences played a leading role in the rescue of the mosaic.

The professional world only speaks in superlatives of it. It describes the palace mosaic of Constantinople as the most beautiful, the biggest, the most perfectly laid, the most artistic, and the most precious floor mosaic of antiquity. Nevertheless it would almost have perished - had not the Austrian Academy of Sciences together with the General Direction of Monuments and Museums of Turkey jointly started a rescue operation.

To celebrate this year´s 150^th anniversary of the foundation of the Academy of Sciences, the new arranged mosaic floor, for which a special museum has been erected, will soon be opened to the public. A team of Austrian and Turkish archeologists, petrologists, architects, and restorers under the supervision of the archeologist and mosaic expert Werner Jobst were concerned with the research-work and the restoration, which took them 14 years. The total costs amounting to approximately 20million Austrian Shillings, which were raised by the AAS, the Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research, the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and various private sponsors.

The mosaics were found and partly uncovered between 1935 and 1938, partly between 1952 and 1954 directly behind the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, about three to four metres below today´s street level. Even in those days enthusiasm arose about the well-grouped scenes from hunting and circus-games, rural idylls and mythological presentations - and their style was compared with stonefloors in Syria, Palestinia, Rome, Ravenna, Antiochia, and those of the Piazza Armerina on Sicilly.

When in 1982, due to insufficient roofing and inappropriate restoration measures, the inlaid works threatened to collapse because of dirt and algae, a co-operation contract was signed between Turkey and Austria. Its aim: investigation and restoration of the mosaic, construction of a shelter in the form of a museum on the site where the mosaics were found, and publication of the knowledge gained from this project.

In 1983 the archeologist Jobst and the restorer Karl Herold, both relying on relevant experiences from Ephesos, Pergamon, Milet, Didyma, Carnuntum, Iuvavum, Bruckneudorf, began with the removal of the mosaic and its transfer to an Istanbul workshop. Since then Jobst, and later the restorer Christian Gurtner, have been working on the research and the conservation of this Byzantine work of art for several months per year. The rearrangement of the 70 to 80million small stones which make up the mosaic, each measuring 5 by 5 millimetres only, has turned out to be most arduous. The museum, which was designed by a Turkish architect to serve as a shelter for the mosaic, has been completed and the new lay-out of the 250sq.m. of mosaic floor on a 40 centimetres thick cement base is almost finished.

The original mosaic floor, of which only an eighth could be saved, measured 1872 sqm... and not only adorned the uncovered columned peristyle yard, but also extended over an auditorium which was roofed with a vault and served as an audience hall. It was set under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527 - 565) as a completion of the enlargement and the embellishment of the palace started by Emperor Constantine the Great.

Jobst estimates that this work took place between 530 and 540 because Prokop, the secretary of Justinian´s general Belisar, indicated that period in his official report: The Buildings. Moreover, the illustration of a small monkey as a bird-catcher contributed to the dating since it shows the monkey with a stick in its hands. Relying on literary sources, the technique of bird-catching with a stick was already replaced by the use of lime-twigs during the government of Justinian I. The elegant, decorative floor was laid by the best artists of Asia Minor, Italy and probably also Syria, which - at that time - was the centre for the art of mosaics. As a kind of blueprint books with model-drawings were used. These pictures sometimes remind us of the classical landscape paintings of Pompeij and Boscoreale, but they also show parallels to the Hellenistic-Roman art of reliefs or gold and bronze engravings. Limestone, marble, glass, clay and semi-precious stones of all shades of colours were used for the 140 pictures, which are arranged in four bands of friezes. Everything that is shown appears to be three-dimensional: farmers, shepherds and hunters, gazelles, mountain goats, sheep and horses, exotic birds and snakes, lion and panther paws, as well as gods and heroes of the ancient mythology. In contrast to the well-known mosaics of the classical period, they are shown like silhouettes, that is without a shadow in front of a plain background.

(translated by Lise 2D students under the supervision of Mr. G. Sihorsch, November 1997)