Wall Painting Decoration from the North-West Church in Hippos-Sussita of the Decapolis

Abstrakt

Excavations in the North-West Church yielded numerous fragments of plain and painted wall plaster, which suggest that the entire interior of the church was plastered, and in large part, decorated with wall paintings. The majority of painted remains were discovered in the martyrion chapel and in the diakonikon. This paper describes the findings and addresses the following questions: to what extent was the church painted; what did the paintings represent; were these paintings aniconic; what are the characteristic features of the technique of execution of these paintings; do these paintings belong to a single phase of decoration of the church?