Destinations: In Pursuit of the Elusive Bird Mosaic

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My mother loves archaeology. If you want to know how much, walk into the Israel Museum’s archaeology galleries, where the “Treasure of the Judean Desert” is on display, and look at a picture of her as a kerchief-clad 19-year-old, smiling alongside the legendary archaeologist Pesach Bar-Adon as they admire a spectacular find. She looks happy, and a little astonished.

My mother first came to Israel in 1960, when Bar-Adon was seeking volunteers to help test his theory that ancient civilizations had, indeed, survived in the desert by living in caves. Having organized a crew, he set off for Qumran (on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found) and assigned one volunteer and one soldier to each of the cliff caves he had chosen.

The way my mother tells the story, she was digging around without especially high hopes when all of a sudden she found her hand wrapped around a skull. Even then, she didn’t think much of it. The soldier guarding her reacted first, calling for Bar-Adon and the cameras. In my parents’ living room, you can see more pictures like the ones on display at the Israel Museum. You can see Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and my mother walking on a rocky desert surface. He is leading her towards his helicopter. Ben-Gurion flew in expressly to see this discovery with his own eyes; then he took my mother home for lunch with his wife Paula.

Last July my mother came back to Jerusalem for a brief visit. One evening she asked me if I had ever heard of an Armenian mosaic, something supposedly amazing, located somewhere in central Jerusalem. I hadn’t. My mother’s source was a recent Lonely Planet Guide to Israel. On page 154, in the section on “Things to See and Do,” we found these tantalizing lines, entitled simply Armenian Mosaic: “Unfortunately, at the time of our last visit there was no admission to this site, but anyone interested in seeing what is possibly the most attractive mosaic floor in the Middle East should inquire at the Mardigian Museum in the Armenian Quarter. The building housing the mosaic is just around the corner from, and behind, the Ramses 062Youth Hostel on HaNevi’im St.”

The most attractive mosaic floor in the Middle East? My mother and I looked intently at each other. Despite my frequent nighttime strolls past the restaurants on HaNevi’im Street, I had never even heard of the Ramses Youth Hostel. We decided to investigate.

On HaNevi’im Street, predictably, I found nothing. We called the Armenian Patriarchate (the headquarters of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem), but no one knew about the mosaic. One sweltering afternoon, we made our way to the Mardigian Museum, a beautiful Old City structure with a light-filled central patio, sparsely furnished with a few Armenian reminiscences. It was cool and airy there, and as we left I asked the guard if he knew anything about an Armenian floor, a mosaic, located somewhere outside the Old City walls. Nothing. He suggested we come back later and speak with a man called Shahan, who knew more.

Our next stop was the St. James Cathedral, the grandest of Jerusalem’s Armenian churches and the seat of the Armenian Patriarchate. An ornate collection of 12th-century chapels, clustered around a twinkling, star-shaped dome, St. James actually looks more like an exquisitely wrought medieval palace than a European-style cathedral. Being inside feels like strolling through a sapphire: blue, glimmering, and constantly changing, with frescoes, chandeliers and stained glass.

My mother, wearing khakis and a short-sleeved shirt, was allowed in for the service, but I was stopped at the gate. The bearded doorman stared at my summery skirt and sleeveless top and shook his head, speechless with disapproval. When he found his voice, he scolded me in fluent Hebrew. Such was his dismay that I was not even permitted to approach the patio that eventually led to the church.

Hot and frustrated, I sat down on a cool cement step leading to the gatehouse offices. “How long does the service last?” I asked. “Get up! Now!” the gatekeeper rebuked me. “You cannot sit like that next to the church!” By now I’d had more than enough. I gathered my things, a notebook and a small bag, and began to make off for the museum once again to see if I could find Shahan. “Where are you going? Your mother is inside,” he said. The gatekeeper seemed to be in his mid-50s. Tall, dark-haired, heavily bearded and very strict, he wore a deep blue gown that reached down to the floor. “If she comes out before I get back, tell her I’ve gone to the museum to look for Shahan,” I said, turning to go.

“Why do you look for Shahan?” he asked.

“They told me he could help us find a mosaic. Do you know him?”

He looked at me in silence, then said, “Yes. The big mosaic? On Ha’Nevi’im?”

“Yes!”

“I am Shahan,” he confessed.

What a way to get started, I thought. But, once informed of my quest, the imposing Shahan seemed transformed. Pleasantly, he told me where the mosaic was 063located—not on West Jerusalem’s bistro-heavy Rehov HaNevi’im after all, but on a small continuation of the street near Damascus Gate. He warned me, however, that there was no way to see the mosaic, something to do with a squatter and a long quarrel. Then he said he’d talk with someone. He left, brought me a chair. Left again, came back and asked, “When do you want to go?” He held a small key chain in his hand.

It turned out that Shahan was an archdeacon of the Armenian Church. When my mother reappeared, he accompanied us to a busy, shabby corner not far from the commercial area between Jerusalem’s Highway 1 and Damascus Gate. We parked in front of a run-down, ramshackle building graced with a sign for the Ramses Youth Hostel. Next door, to the right, we walked through a gray gate and into a boisterous maze of metallic junk: mattress springs, old refrigerators, ovens, stove-tops, objects of unknown provenance. An elderly Arab man wearing a gray jellaba greeted us, smiling as though we’d walked into his living room. Going on instinct, I said hello back. Shahan glowered at me and trudged forward through the clutter toward a white metal door. He pulled the key chain out of his pocket. Opening the door, Shahan whispered that the old man and his flourishing, illegal junk business were the source of years of conflict.

We entered a shabby, nondescript, low-ceilinged room, furnished only with a small desk that could have belonged to a child. Nothing so much as hinted at “the most attractive mosaic floor in the Middle East.” But appearances can be deceiving, especially in history-rich Jerusalem. We later learned that the unimpressive structure we were passing through sat on the grounds of a sixth-century convent erected in memory of St. Polyeuctos, an Armenian officer in the 12th Legion of the Roman army.

“Look in there,” Shahan instructed, pointing at a wooden door to our right that led to the remains of Polyeuctos’s funerary chapel. We opened the door, and both of us—my mother and I—stood still, entranced. Before us lay a treasure the likes of which we had not imagined: a perfectly preserved mosaic, not one stone out of place, spread out in magisterial and graceful opulence. There was something otherworldly in the experience.

The Bird Mosaic, as it is often called, depicts a stylized tree of life in the form of an expanding vine. The branches of the vine twist and turn to form more than 30 roundels, and every roundel contains a spectacular bird. Each of the birds is different—ducks and geese, doves and peacocks, pheasants and birds of paradise—fashioned out of stones that shine with color. The tree, or vine, grows out of a spectacular silver amphora, and the entire work is framed by a multi-colored braid of pebbles. For a few moments we were speechless; then my mother commented wryly that in all the many hours she had spent trudging up hills in Sicily, she had never seen anything like this. The mosaic is quite simply breathtaking.

Near the top of the tiled floor is an inscription, written in sixth-century Armenian. Shahan (whose surname we never did discover) explained that it read “To the memory and salvation of the souls of all Armenians whose names are known by God alone.” According to the Armenian Patriarchate, the mosaic lies above a mass grave of Armenian soldiers, making it “the first monument erected in memory of the unknown soldier.”

My mother pulled out a camera, but hesitated, unsure how to proceed. There seemed to be no way to capture this image. Shahan encouraged her to take off her sandals and step right on the ancient stones, which she did, pausing to photograph bird after bird. We stayed for almost half an hour.

Later, back in her room, my mother removed her shoes and started to laugh. “Look at this,” she said. The soles of her feet were black as night, encrusted with dust.