page_title: Latium (1669)
section_title: The Nile mosaic
hierarchical_section_title: Latium (1669) / The Nile mosaic
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of the 'Nile mosaic' from Kircher's 'Latium'
context_page_description: Latium is a 1669 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was dedicated to Pope Clement X and a 1671 edition was published in Amsterdam by Johannes van Waesbergen. The work was the first to discuss the topography, archeology and history of the Lazio region. It was based partly on Kircher's extensive walks in the countryside around Rome, although it included sites that he had probably not visited in person. The work included many illustrations of the contemporary countryside, as well as reconstructions of ancient buildings. It also included an account of his discovery of the ruined sanctuary at Mentorella, which he had already recounted in his 1665 work Historia Eustachio Mariana.
context_section_description: Around 1600 a Roman mosaic was discovered at the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste.  It is known to modern scholarship as "the Nile mosaic" because it is understood to represent the course of the River Nile from the mountains of Ethiopia through Sudan and Egypt to the sea. However in Book III of Latium Kircher offered a completely different interpretation of the piece, based on the idea that it depicted ceremonies in honour of the goddess of fortune.  The upper part, he said, depicted wild animals, representing fortune's dangers. He noted that the people of ancient Praeneste were devotees of Hercules, who was famous for having destroyed monsters and overcome ill fortune. Beneath this, he said, was depicted the veneration of the goddess and consultation of her oracle. He correctly identified the temple of Serapis but this did not serve as a clue of the mosaic's real subject. At the bottom there are festivals and processions in honour of the goddess.
caption: Illustration of the 'Nile mosaic' from Kircher's 'Latium'
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