The Palace at the Myrelaion: Mosaics, Marble Revetment, Brick Stamps, and Dating of the Early Byzantine Phase

The palace at the Myrelaion in Istanbul has last been excavated by R. Naumann in 1965/66. Naumann reported the excavation in the same year (Istanbuler Mitteilungen 16, 1966, 199-216), but most of the finds were not included in the report and have never been published. Floor mosaics show the mythological hunter Akteon wielding a spear. The iconography can be compared with the Great Palace Mosaics and may have been the model for the Megalopsychia panel at the Yakto Complex in Daphne near Antiochia. Marble revetment has been imported from Dokimon on the Anatolian High Plateau, as has been confirmed by archaeometric analysis (W. Prochaska, Leoben). A series of 21 pilaster capitals each have a different decoration and exemplify the aesthetic principle of ’varietas’. This early Byzantine innovation has so far been ascribed to the reuse of varied spolia in Rome. The ‘varietas’ of the newly carved revetment at the eastern capital does now point to an Anatolian origin of this aesthetic innovation. A number of brick stamps round off the corpus that has so far been published from the same find spot. They as well as all other available evidence complies with a dating to around A.D. 400. The early Byzantine complex at the Myrelaion may therefore be one of the earliest standing monuments of Constantinople. It contains the largest domed hall of the city and most probably served as a representative residency for a leading member of the imperial aristocracy.

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