The Hinton St Mary Mosaic: A Face Before the Chi-Rho

In 1963, in the Dorset village of Hinton St Mary, the blacksmith Walter White was digging a post-hole when his spade struck a floor of small coloured stones. Excavation uncovered the mosaic pavement of two rooms of a Roman building. In the middle of the larger room was a roundel: the head and shoulders of a clean-shaven, fair-haired man in a cloak, and behind his head the monogram ☧, the Chi-Rho, the first two Greek letters of Christos. On either side of him hangs a pomegranate. If the face is Christ's, as most scholars think, it is one of the earliest known pictures of him anywhere, and the earliest from Britain.

The object

• A mosaic floor from a Roman villa or building, dated on grounds of style to the fourth century CE, and attributed to a workshop based at Durnovaria (Dorchester).
• Lifted in 1965 and acquired by the British Museum. For years only the central medallion has been on display; the rest was stored, and the museum has since led new fieldwork at the site.
• It covered two rooms joined by an opening: a smaller one with Bellerophon on Pegasus killing the Chimera, and a larger one with the Chi-Rho bust, surrounded by hunting scenes and four corner busts, sometimes read as the winds or the four evangelists.

Who is the man?

• The usual reading: Christ, with the Chi-Rho as his halo-like emblem.
• An alternative: the emperor Constantine or another Christian ruler, the Chi-Rho being Constantine's battle standard.
• Some have also asked why an image of Christ would be placed on a floor, to be walked on; later Christian law (427 CE) forbade putting the sign of Christ on pavements.

Symbology and sacred encoding

The Chi-Rho. Two letters, Χ and Ρ, superimposed: a name turned into an emblem, which Constantine used after 312 and which became one of the commonest Christian signs of the fourth century.

Pomegranates. In Greek myth the fruit of Persephone and return from the dead; for Christians it could signal eternal life and resurrection.

Bellerophon. A pagan hero killing a monster; in a Christian house it may stand for good defeating evil. The mosaic mixes the two vocabularies in the way fourth-century Christians often did.

Connections

Early Christianity (ch16), with Roman Mystery Cults (ch18) and Rome (ch13) for the pagan imagery it borrows. Compare other early images claimed to show Christ: the Shroud of Turin (V04), the Mandylion (V57) and the Veil of Veronica (V25).

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/hinton-st-mary-mosaic.html