Wall Painting Fragments with a Half-Rosette, from Dura-Europos

The paintings of Dura-Europos came to light by accident. In 1920 British soldiers digging positions on the Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, hit painted walls under the sand. Two years later the Belgian historian Franz Cumont arrived to excavate for the French Academy of Inscriptions. In 1922 and 1923 he worked in the temple of Artemis, and from one of its rooms, which he labelled C, he lifted these pieces of painted plaster. He published them in 1926 in his report on the dig.

What survives is half a circle in red and black, a rosette or perhaps a wheel. The Louvre's record keeps a question mark on it. The pattern was painted and also incised into the plaster, and the whole piece is about 32 centimetres each way.