Stunning 2,000-year-old Roman mosaic unearthed in Turkey appears to honor familys beloved cat and dog

Fur-ever immortalized.Archaeologists have unearthed a mosaic a Roman household commissioned to honor its beloved dog and cat nearly 2,000 years ago.The artwork, believed to date to the late second or third century AD, was found inside the remains of a Roman villa beneath the ancient harbor city of Adramytteion on Turkey’s Aegean coast, according to Live Science.At the heart of the villa sat an expansive mosaic, measuring about 16.4 by 11.8 feet and made up of 15 individual scenes depicting birds, fish, felines and figures from mythology — including what appears to be the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa at its center.But only two of the many animals in the stunning artwork were given names: a cat called Emerald and a dog called Ocean.Hüseyin Özgen, who leads the Adramytteion research team at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, said the names suggest Emerald and Ocean were more than decoration — they likely mattered to the people who lived there, according to his study in the Journal of Mosaic Research.A pale-colored cat is shown stretched out on a blue-green cushion like she owned the place — her name, ΖΜΑΡΑΓΔΙΝ, meaning “emerald,” spelled out above her in Greek.That laid-back pose suggests Emerald was a beloved member of the household — not a stray street cat, Özgen wrote in the study.Özgen wrote that one possible explanation for Emerald’s name is a link to the deserts of Roman Egypt, where emeralds were mined in antiquity.He suggested the villa’s owner may have been a merchant with North African connections.Ocean, meanwhile, got a far more energetic portrait.The panel shows the dog either mid-leap or mid-run, identified as ΩΚΕΑΝΟΣ, the Greek word for “ocean.”Özgen speculated the dog’s name was no accident — Ocean may have been a nod to Adramytteion itself, a city that sat right on the water.While it’s impossible to know if Emerald and Ocean were pets as we’d define them today, Özgen noted that both animals were likely a ...