  About the Artwork
  
  
  This wonderfully naturalistic representation of the river Tigris as a bearded man wearing a wreath of river grasses formed one corner of the floor of a room in a house in Seleucia Pieria, the port of the city of Antioch. The decorative scheme of the floor was apparently the personification of the four eastern provinces of the Roman Empire surrounded by the personifications of their four principal rivers, each identified by name in Greek. The elaborate metaphor in mosaic was set in what was probably the dining room of the house.
  
  
  Title
  Mosaic with Personification of the River Tigris
  
  
  Artwork Date
  late 100s–200s
  
  Artist
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  Life Dates
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  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Roman
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Various stones
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 56 3/4 × 56 1/4 × 2 1/2 inches (144.1 × 142.9 × 6.4 cm)
  Overall (central square): 42 1/2 × 42 1/2 inches (108 × 108 cm)
  Overall (thickness/depth): 2 1/8 inches (5.4 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Mosaics
  
  
  Department
  Greco-Roman and Ancient European
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  40.127
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
