Der frühbyzantinische Rundbau beim Myrelaion in Konstantinopel. Kapitelle, Mosaiken und Ziegelstempel

mit Beiträgen von Jenny Abura und Walter Prochaska

Abstract

The palace at the Myrelaion in Istanbul has been excavated by R. Naumann in 1965/66. Naumann reported the excavation in the same year, but most of the finds were not included in the report and have never been published. Floor mosaics show the mythological hunter Akteon wielding a spear. The iconography may have been the model for the Megalopsychia panel at the Yakto Complex in Daphne near Antiochia. Marble revetment has been imported from Dokimon on the Anatolian High Plateau, as has been confirmed by archaeometric analyses. A series of 15 or more pilaster capitals differ from each other and exemplify the aesthetic principle of ›varietas‹. This early Byzantine innovation has so far been ascribed to the reuse of varied spolia in Rome. The ›varietas‹ of the newly carved revetment at the eastern capital does now point to an eastern origin of this aesthetic innovation. A number of brick stamps round off the corpus that has so far been published from the same find spot. They as well as all other available evidence comply with a dating to around A.D. 400. The early Byzantine complex at the Myrelaion may therefore be one of the earliest standing monuments of Constantinople. It contained the largest domed hall of the city and probably served as a residency for a member of the imperial aristocracy, possibly for nobilissima Arcadia, a daughter of Arcadius and sister of Theodosius II.