Memento Mori: Mosaic edition

Our memento mori series for October continues with a skeleton mosaic that dates from the 1st century CE and comes from the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius. 

Mosaics are patterns or images made with irregular pieces of stone, glass, or ceramic and held in place with plaster or mortar.  They were particularly popular in the Ancient Roman world. 

This particular example currently resides at the Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli (Napoli National Archeological Museum) and is part of their mosaic collection that comes from Pompeii and Herculaneum, both towns were destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79CE.  So the archeological sites that you can visit, are a kind of memento mori in and of themselves. 

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