Ananeosis at Qasr el Lebia : introducing renewal after Justinian's North African victory

The image of Ananeosis from a ruined church's mosaic pavement embodies Cyrenaica's renewal after rejoining the empire. In this analysis, Ananeosis is the key to all the subjects depicted in the original grid. It was a grid of fifty squares in the horizontal rows, with five squares in each row filled with diverse natural, allegorical, and architectural forms. Her image gives unusual prominence to depiction of basketweave, and introduces the theme of renewal in creation both human and divine. Drawing a rose-garland from a basket, she makes time an important qualifier, to be expressed in the squares around her, by changing symmetries and variations in paired images and by the prominence of two musical instruments. Renewal, both momentary and recurring, is expressed with hoped-for local or regional significance and bound to awareness of Empire-wide tastes and resources, both physical and cultural.