A masterpiece of ancient Rome in a Bucks stable … for just one more week

 Tucked in the Buckinghamshire countryside, for just one more week, you can see one of the finest complete mosaics of the Roman Empire.  If that's not surprising enough, get this: it's from Israel.  This is its last stop on a world tour while its new museum in Lod, near Tel Aviv, has been under construction.  If you're lucky enough to live anywhere in striking distance, get to Waddesdon Manor before the special exhibition ends next week.

What's the big deal?  There are very few mosaics from the Roman world that are this big (50 ft long by 27 feet wide) and in such perfect shape.  Other than two missing spots at one end, it's perfectly intact.  It  is marvellously beautiful.  And it conveys a sense of culture and conviviality that reminds us of just how good life could be in the Roman Empire.  Even at its edges.

This was, fairly obviously, a dining room floor.  Just below the central octagon two leopards … the standard bearers of the wine god Dionysos … hang off the sides of a large wine flagon.  The immediate message is clear: welcome, you'll have a fine time here.

If this first image promises fine drinking, the rest tells you how well you'll eat.  On one end, a dazzling variety of fish that might end up on your plate swim beneath the ships out to catch them.  On the other, a bevy of creatures of the field and forest.  Around the centre, the best of both, shown in loving detail.  And in the central octagon, an exotic scene of African animals, including an elephant and one of the earliest giraffes shown in Western art.  Its quality … in colours, in realistic portrayal of the animals, in the stylistic unity of the whole piece … is on par with the finest examples I saw in the blockbuster Bardo museum in Tunis, Tunisia (Which I wrote about here).

It's all the more interesting because it comes from Israel, someplace we don't often associate with peaceful, cosmopolitan daily lives in the Roman empire.  (Blacker episodes of a destroyed temple or Pilate's judgement are more likely to come to mind.)  Amazingly, it spent the past 1,700 years just one meter below ground level.  Experts believe it was a fluke of all four original walls falling inwards that protected the floor.  It was only another fluke, of road construction, that revealed it to the modern world.

How did it get to Waddesdon?  The manor is one of the homes of the Rothschild family in England.  Unsurprisingly, the famous family of Jewish bankers have strong ties with Israel.  This house has always been a quirky one; it's a perfect French chateau set in the middle of the English countryside.  So why shouldn't they have a perfect Roman imperial floor in their barn?

If you have nothing on next weekend, get there and check it out before it start its journey back home.