Preliminary Report on the 1996 Swiss-Liechtenstein excavations at ez Zantur
by Bernhard Kolb (with contributions by Daniel Keller and Regine Fellmann Brogli)
V. Ez Zantur IV: Wall decoration in rooms 2 and 3
Less important rooms, as we know from the houses and villas in Campania continued to be decorated in a simpler and somewhat anachronistic manner (Strocka 1975: 101ff.). We have to see the stuccoed and painted decoration in corridor 2 (west face of wall A) and room 3 (south face of wall C: fig. 4) taking this into account It cannot yet be ruled out, that the wall decoration in rooms 2 and 3 belong to an earlier phase than the frescoes in room 1. . The better preserved decoration in room 3 displays a decorative scheme in the Masonry Style: Above a black plinth of ca. 30 cm follows a zone of 140 cm showing panels alternately painted red and yellow with a white lining imitating drafted orthostats. The panels are delineated by thin grooves. Above the orthostats is a string-course consisting of red strechers and yellow headers and the remains of isodomic courses of the upper zone (fig. 4). Close parallels to this Masonry Style decoration and its colour scheme are known from the staircase of the Baths next to the Temenos Gate at Petra A. Barbet, Les caractéristiques de la peinture murale à Petra. Pp. 383–389 in K. ’Amr – F. Zayadine – M. Zaghloul (eds.), SHAJ 5. London, 1995. She dates the decoration in the staircase stylistically to the late 2nd. or early 1st century BC.; compare Zayadine 1987: 137ff. .
It is to be hoped that further excavations will help to clarify the still unsecure chronology of the different types of wall decorations at Petra – up till today mainly based on typological and stylistic comparisons for lack of published archaeological findings. As a preliminary result of the discussed paintings on EZ IV we may say that the walls decorated in the Masonry Style seem to challenge the early date of the similar specimens in the staircase of the Bath at Petra (late 2nd. – early 1st century BC) Cf. Barbet, supra note 17, 389. .
