Mukheitem nr. Jabaliyah / Mukheitem al-Jabliya

This Early Christian complex was discovered in 1966 during road works between Erez and Gaza city; at the north end of the site was found a baptistery, about 8.5 m square. The outer area, all covered in beautiful mosaics of Byzantine influence, takes up about 2/3 of the surface; the central part, about a third of the surface, had a large ciborium of which only the four corner stones and the four column bases remain; in the centre of this formerly covered area was the square basin of which only the shape remains. The ornamentation of the floor mosaic is described by Humbert et al. (Gaza, 2000, p. 124-125) as having at the angles exotic animals separated from each other by "bouquets d'arbres aux fruits éclatants"; of one elephant only the back, the end of the trunk and one foot remain; on the right side the archaeologists managed to restore the leg of a zebra and the body of a giraffe; to either side of the font there were two panels with rose bushes and two half-preserved human figures: on the right the bust of an old man with a white beard and leaves in his hair, while on the left, there is the bust of a naked and buxom woman, water gushing forth from her breasts; both these figures emerging out of the wavey waters and identified in the source as two of the rivers of Paradise by the partial inscriptions, PHISON next to the old man and GE [i.e., GEON, the Nile] by the woman. Of the other two rivers and the figures representing them only an image of a wave remains now. The same source informs that another inscription carries the name of the mosaic artists, Victor and Kosmas, both from nearby Ascalon, who composed it in the year 548/549. The area outside the ciborium is covered in multi-patterned mosaic, all non-figural geometric patterns.