Vandals cooked meal on Kos Europa mosaic
Police on the eastern Aegean island of Kos were looking yesterday for a group of vandals who celebrated the second-last day of the drachma with a cook-up on an ancient mosaic depicting the Rape of Europa. The late third-century AD mosaic, which depicts the mythical Phoenician princess – after whom Europe is named – hanging on to a bull in a slight variation on the scene on the Greek two-euro coin, was badly damaged. «The tesserae on the upper left-hand corner of the mosaic have suffered serious damage, as heat transforms them into plaster,» Kos archaeologist Elpida Skerlou told Kathimerini. «We do not know if they can be repaired.» Tesserae are the cubes making up the mosaic. The vandals broke into the shelter built over the mosaic, which belonged to a Roman house under the ancient citadel of Kos – inside the island’s modern capital – on Tuesday night, lit a fire and cooked potatoes. They also sprayed rude slogans on the shelter’s outer walls.
