The Mosaie Museum is to be found in the arcade of shops attached to the complex of Sultanahmet mosque. The arcade was built to provide income for the mosque, but was destroyed by fire in 1908, remaining in ruins for a considerable period af ter that date. Excavations carried out on the site between 1935-38 by Prof. Baxter revealed the remains of part of the Grand Palace of the Byzantine emperors, whieh appears to have possessed an exteosively arcaded courtyard measuring 86 x 55 ms. The arcade was 8.8 ms. in depth. and paved with mosaie. Further excavations carried out between 1951 -54 by Prof. T albot Riee uncovered mosaies whieh were set up in a museum in 1953. The mosaies belonging to the palace date from the 4-5 century A.D. They were apparently covered over in the 6 century by marble pavements, and built over in the 7 -8 centuries. Later, they were incorporated into the Sultanahmet mosque arcade on the construction of the mosque in the 17 century. The mosaies of the Grand Palace, whieh are displayed in situ, are made of minute stone tesserae. The ground is of white stone tesserae arranged in fish scale pattern, while the figures are worked in tesserae of red, black, green, brown, blue and yellow stone. The m"05aies are extremely tadile in effeel. The subject matter is secular, the emphasis on pastoral deviees in a genre st yle. Notable among them are the figures of a lion devouring a Hzard, a stag entwined with a snake, a woman giving breast to a child, the combat of a spearbearing hunter and a tiger, a child feeding a donkey, a young girl carring an amphora, a cam el with children mounted on its back with a cam el-driver and a monkey pkking a banana from the tree.