Word: mosaic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...latter days Moses has been psychoanalyzed by Freud (Moses and Monotheism) and has taken his turn at the treaDeMille (The Ten Commandments). Now. ex-Communist Howard Fast, veteran of 14 mostly ideological novels (Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road), has turned out what looks like Volume I of a Mosaic saga with overtones of both Freud and DeMille...
...slicing away the sand dunes when one day its driver noticed that he was grazing what seemed to be scorched pavement with jewel-encrusted slabs. Archaeologist Moshe Prausnitz, British-trained senior inspector of Israel's Department of Antiquities, arrived on the scene, found a loose layer of burned mosaic floor, and under that two layers of superb mosaic that seemed to be virtually undamaged...
...addition to the black, white and red mosaic, there are wall frescoes, lamps, chancel rails and a whole system of locks. Prausnitz dates the church in the 4th century. One clue: the liberal use of the cross on the floor mosaics, a practice that the church prohibited A.D. 427 on the ground that the feet of worshipers profaned the sacred symbol. A second indication is the floor plan-a long rectangle in the manner of 4th century Roman temples. Definite dating must wait upon other scholars and future excavations...
...happened to this once great church that may have echoed to Christian prayers when Augustine was Bishop of Hippo? Prausnitz theorizes that it was probably sacked by Persian King Chosroes I in his 6th century invasion of Syria. Then the winds blew, and the sand swept over the bright mosaic...
...sitting now cooling off in his little Spanish police-cell, tried again to piece together in his hot red mind what in all strange hell had happened." He is tantalized by a fleeting vision of beauty-a girl he thinks he once loved. But as pieces of the mad mosaic drop into place, it becomes clear that he is not facing a beautiful girl but a harridan with blue-rinsed hair and "grey old teeth that licked at him with such a smile of knowledge." In the end, the knowledge comes to him that his fate is at the mercy...