Mosaic is an art of flooring, mural or ceiling covering by harmoniously placing natural stones in different colors, metal, glass, china or sea shells to form a pattern.
The main material of mosaic is natural stones. Mortar is used as a binding material. “Even though the stone laying techniques show differences, processes are same in principle. Before a surface is covered by mosaics the base is cleaned and aerated for the mortar to have a better grip on the surface
Besides the contemporary mosaics Artéquité provides the fine reproductions as well. Maenad is one of them. The original mosaic dates from the second century CE and is currently exhibited in Gaziantep Archeology Museum in Turkey.
Maenad , literally ‘madwoman’, was a female follower of the wine god Dionysus. She is usually shown participating in the orgiastic Dionysian rites.
It is the only surviving part of the figured section of a large pavement. It belongs to a young girl whose hair is held in a beret. Some long locks of hair appear in two groups above the eyebrows and while some of them enclose her face some hang loosely. The flower or ribbon fragment which has survived to the right might have belonged to the top of a thyrsus she or a figure next to her may have held, and thus would point to the existence of a Dionysian scene. To the upper left of her head traces of a vine leaf survive. This emblem was surrounded by a wide border of a vine scroll, a device which may also imply the existence of a Dionysian scene unless she was a representation of Ge (Gaia; Earth).
The rest of the emblem is thought to have been partly stolen and partly destroyed by the robbers as they tried to remove it in the middle of the last century.
