The above picture of this almost cartoonish piece was taken at the Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Gaziantep, Turkey and provided by Adam Jones. the mosaic is still held in said museum. This captivating mosaic piece is thought to have been created sometime between the second to third century in the ancient city of Zeugma. Zeugma (which means bridge) sits or rather sat on the banks of the Euphrates river in southeast turkey and was in ancient time the only point at which one could cross the river between Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The image depicts Oceanus the titan and his sister/ wife Tethys. Oceanus is typically depicted as having an eels tail as feet in the figures on ceramics, here we see two busts. Oceanus is shown to have Chelsea ( which i assume are a type of shell fish) on his forehead an Tethys has wings on her head. Both of these Mighty and mythical beings were water deities who together produced more than 6,000 offspring that were expressions of different watery domains. The full mosaic depicts the happy couple surrounded by Eros riding on many aquatic creatures and between them you can see a serpentine dragon which was called a Cetos. Cetos or dragons could be seen on Zeugma coins and were sometimes used to represent the Euphrates river. This piece is beautiful and deserves much admiration as well as a little thought as to what the creator(s) had in mind when creating it.
