The National Museum of Damascus preserves a monumental Umayyad painting, featuring a central circular depiction of a woman holding up a veil filled with fruit between her hands. Originating from Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi in the southwestern outskirts of Palmyra, this artwork entered the museum and was installed in the upper hall of the wing dedicated to archaeological antiquities excavated from the ruins of this desert palace. Crafted in an exquisite classical Roman style, the painting adheres to an artistic tradition that prevailed throughout the Syrian lands during the centuries prior to the advent of Islam in the region. Dating back to the early decades of the eighth century, this mural serves as a testament through its refined execution to the continuity of this style during the Umayyad era, representing one of its most beautiful Levantine manifestations at the dawn of the Middle Ages.
اضافة اعلان
This rectangular painting was executed on a surface of durable plaster mortar. In its current display, it resembles a wall mural; however, it was originally a floor painting that decorated the reception hall in the western wing of the palace built by Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in 727. The piece is distinguished by its exceptional size, measuring 5.21 meters in length and 4.43 meters in width. Surrounding the painting is a broad decorative border adorned with a spiral vine of leafy branches, from which hang clusters of red grapes. Although these branches have been geometrically stylized into successive circles of uniform size, they retain their natural weight, which is particularly evident in the rendering of the grape clusters. At the center of this frame stands a frontal bust of a woman, positioned within a circular border decorated with a sequence of symmetrical, pearl-like roundels stamped with stylized floral motifs. The face departs from standard classical patterns, its features reflecting a regional aesthetic that blended Roman and Persian traditions into a local Syrian mold—one that predominated in Palmyra as well as other parts of the Levant.
The structure of the head is rounded, crowned by a thick mass of dark hair that frames the face, featuring a slight parting at the center of the crown and two small locks cascading onto the forehead. The eyes are wide and almond-shaped, surmounted by prominent, arched, and separated eyebrows, with the slender bridge of the nose descending between them. The mouth is closed, formed by a simple line that traces the partition between her thin lips. The cheeks are plump and flushed with purple. The neck is broad, adorned with a short pearl necklace, above which a serpent coils, raising its head over the right shoulder. The woman raises her hands toward her chest, carrying a veil shaped like an open bundle, piled with a variety of fruits centered around two pears. This fruit appears tightly packed and suspended in space, forming a horizontal plane that occupies the upper section of the female chest.
This image adopts a well-known archetype in classical art representing the cosmic goddess "Gaia," who, according to Greek mythology, was the first to emerge at the beginning of existence. This mother goddess is described as the one of vast womb and the fortress of all immortals. Her image was later stripped of its original mythological meaning, transforming into a "neutral" icon representing simply the bountiful, fertile earth. The serpent coiled around the neck constitutes one of her accompanying iconographic elements, symbolizing fertility, bounty, and continuous renewal in the ancient world.
Gaia appears at the center of a circular medallion embedded within a rectangular field covered in decorative plant branches. Amidst these ornaments, in the upper section of the field above the head of Mother Earth, emerge two identical fantastical creatures. Each has the bare-chested torso and head of a human, combined with the scaly, finned legs and tail of a massive dragon. Archaeologist Daniel Schlumberger identified this creature, which coils three times around itself in a spiral, as a "marine centaur." While the mythological Greek centaur traditionally possesses a human upper body and a horse lower body, in this Umayyad depiction, it appears as a creature that is half-human and half-dragon. Unfortunately, the lower portion of this artistic composition suffered damage and is lost; what remains of it reveals the remnants of two foxes—one feeding on grapes—along with two birds from the crane family, and a dog chasing an animal whose features have faded, making its identification difficult.
The image of Mother Earth on this floor painting from Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi was not an isolated occurrence within the Umayyad artistic heritage. We encounter her figure repeated six times in a highly symmetrical architectural composition in Qusayr Amra, located in the Jordanian desert. There, she appears on either side of the vaulted ceiling above the ruler's portrait, in the section known as the "Throne Room." This presence represents the continuity of a traditional archetype with numerous surviving examples across the Levant and the wider Near East. Some scholars argue that its adoption in these two Umayyad sites carries significant symbolic meaning.
According to a theoretical interpretation proposed by the scholar Richard Ettinghausen in his seminal 1962 book, Arab Painting, the depiction of the fertile earth in the guise of Gaia, "along with the surrounding ocean represented by marine beasts," signifies the world "laid out flat beneath the feet of this dynasty." Whether the local artist followed this formula "in accordance with official directives or not, such a specific meaning was undeniably evident to the new converts to Islam in Greater Syria."
