Last week I wrote a paragraph into my book Cape to Cabernet, explaining how my protagonist, Ganiet, had discovered her calling to be a mosaic artist. The very next day I ended up at Kourion, an archaeological site near Limassol on Cyprus. And what did I discover there? Ancient mosaics in the Byzantine style.
The paragraph I added to Cape to Cabernet
I’d been staying with a friend at Beit Kama Kibbutz, not far from us, near Rahat, for the summer holidays. We had just finished lunch one day when one of the Hungarian members ran in shouting “come and see, come and see” but because he shouted it in Hungarian I didn’t find out what he said until later. Turned out the enginners who were building a road through one of the kibbutz’s grain fields had hit upon an archaeological treasure.
The Negev is crawling with archaeological treasures so Ella and I didn’t let it disturb our afternoon swimming. The next day at breakfast we spotted a hunky teenage boy and discovered that he was the son of one of the archaeologists. After that Ella and I spent a lot of time out at the site. They had set up a tarpaulin in the grain field where the Byzantine site had been discovered. I remember it being so hot and how we sat in the shade drinking Coke, each trying to outdo the other in impressing Yali, our teen idol, watching the archaeologists working.
The find wasn’t that far under the earth, maybe half a metre, if that. All that time, 1500 years, goats had grazed around it, farmers had tramped over it, grain had grown into it..it had been there, a treasure, yet hidden. As they carefully swept the soil away, centimetre by centimetre, an exquisite red and yellow mosaic was exposed with peacocks and birds and twisted lattice work.
It felt like my role in life was revealed at the same time.
“I want to do that,” I had tried to explain to my parents.
“Archaeology? It’s a good career,” my father had grunted his approval.
“Not archaeology, mosaic.”
“These days we don’t need floors like that,” my mother had said. “We have concrete and carpets and wood.”
“Yes but..”
“Ag Ganiet, Shiloh will come before you get a sensible thought in your head.”
Here's the video of my visit to Kourion
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