---
title: "A church floor in Karabük may have been a sermon on virtue you could walk on"
description: "A new study suggests the four rivers of Eden at Hadrianoupolis stand for prudence, courage, temperance and justice"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-10-14T01:06:04Z
modified: 2026-10-14T03:09:03Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/a-church-floor-in-karabuk-may-have-been-a-sermon-on-virtue-y-34198b
language: en
tags: ["archaeology", "history", "religion", "art", "turkey", "culture"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# A church floor in Karabük may have been a sermon on virtue you could walk on

*A new study suggests the four rivers of Eden at Hadrianoupolis stand for prudence, courage, temperance and justice*

By Nate Ledger · October 14, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/a-church-floor-in-karabuk-may-have-been-a-sermon-on-virtue-y-34198b

## In brief

- A church floor at Hadrianoupolis in Karabük shows Eden’s four rivers as named human figures holding horns of plenty
- A 2026 study by Nurgül Özer Uras and Mustafa Göregen argues the mosaic may have carried moral teaching
- The authors link the rivers to the cardinal virtues: prudence, courage, temperance and justice
- A Greek dedication beside a bull mosaic names donors Himerius and Valentina
- The church is generally dated to the 5th or 6th century AD and was later partly used for burials

In the ancient city of Hadrianoupolis, near the modern town of Eskipazar in Türkiye’s northern Karabük province, there is a church floor with four men on it. Each one is a river. Each is named in Greek, so there is no guessing about who is who: Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates, the four rivers that Genesis says flowed out of the Garden of Eden. Each holds a horn of plenty, and water pours from the horns into a shared basin full of fish. Archaeologists have known about the mosaic for years. The new part is an argument that it says more than it seems to.

As [Leman Altuntaş reported for Arkeonews](https://arkeonews.net/1500-year-old-church-mosaics-in-turkiye-may-reveal-a-hidden-message-about-the-garden-of-eden/), the researchers Nurgül Özer Uras and Mustafa Göregen argue that the composition may have been teaching worshippers moral lessons, not just illustrating a description of Paradise. Their paper, [published in *Medeniyet Kültürel Araştırmalar Belleteni*](https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/doi/10.60051/medbel.1887549) (volume 6, issue 10, pages 43 to 61), went online in early July 2026 according to the journal’s page. It was submitted on 12 February and accepted on 25 March, which is about six weeks. For academic publishing that counts as brisk.

The scriptural starting point is five verses, Genesis 2:10–14, which begin:

> A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. (Genesis 2:10, ESV)

What the artists did with those verses is the interesting bit. Genesis gives you geography. The Hadrianoupolis artists turned the geography into people, borrowing their visual language from Greek and Roman art, where rivers were routinely shown as human-like deities linked to fertility and prosperity. The figures wear Phrygian-style caps and classical-looking garments. Two have beards and two are clean-shaven. The cornucopias come from the same pagan toolkit. In effect the workshop took a template its customers already recognised and attached it to an Old Testament story. That is a sensible thing for a workshop to do. You don’t need to invent a whole new way to depict a river god if you can relabel the old one.

![A mosaic depicts four seated figures holding fruit-filled cornucopias that pour water into a central pool with fish, surrounded by geometric patterns.](https://rews.cc/img/75043282dd27a9643ec472e974e1a849a598239c.webp)

Reading the labels has not always been straightforward. In an earlier [Hürriyet Daily News report](https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hadrianopolis-church-mosaics-to-open-to-visitors-after-for-years-of-restoration-72125) on the restoration, the archaeologist Ersin Çelikbaş was quoted as saying: “The figures depict the rivers of Euphrates, Tigris and Nile, as well as a fourth river, but we have not proven its existence yet.” The academic literature now names all four as the rivers of Genesis. The inscriptions settled it.

## The virtues

The new paper’s main claim is that early Jewish and Christian interpreters didn’t always treat Eden’s rivers as actual rivers. According to Arkeonews, the authors point to Philo of Alexandria and Ambrose of Milan, who connected the four rivers with the four cardinal virtues: Pishon with prudence, Gihon with courage, Tigris with temperance and Euphrates with justice. The paper’s abstract names a wider group it compares against. On the Jewish side it lists Saadya Gaon, and on the Christian side the Church Fathers Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. It says the authors found “strong evidence” that the river figures may stand for the cardinal virtues.

“Strong evidence” that something “may” be true is a careful academic hedge, and it is the right one here. Nobody left a note on the floor explaining the allegory. The case is that educated Christians of the period knew a well-established reading of these rivers as virtues, so a congregation walking over them might have taken the point. If so, the floor worked as a moral reminder placed exactly where people gathered for worship. I think the honest open question is how much of the congregation got the second meaning, and how many simply saw four men with horns and some very contented fish.

![Sandaled feet beneath a draped robe stand on an ornate mosaic floor featuring an oil lamp, oak tree, cup, and balance scales.](https://rews.cc/img/f12c6b358a54f1c8fe3961424335bbef21d1be98.webp)

The water carries a further layer. The authors connect the flowing water and the fish with baptism, purification, divine abundance and spiritual renewal. In early Christianity water meant baptism and the forgiveness of sins, so rivers flowing from Paradise could point both back to creation and forward to salvation.

## The rest of the floor

The church holds more than the rivers. Near the southeastern entrance is a cross-shaped motif that the researchers read as apotropaic, meaning it was there to ward off evil. Protective symbols of that kind had pre-Christian precedents, and the abstract describes symbols such as the Maltese Cross as evidence of continuity between paganism and Christianity. Cross motifs in the site’s churches have had [their own study](https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/jmr/article/1376869) in the *Journal of Mosaic Research*. Another panel shows a peacock in a refrigerium scene, an early Christian image of eternal life. There are geometric and floral patterns and animals as well.

One of those animals is a bull drinking from a pool, and next to it is a Greek dedication naming Himerius and Valentina, whose gift helped pay for the decoration. The theology on this floor is a matter of interpretation. The donor credit is not. Fifteen centuries later, the most certain fact about the church is who paid for some of it, and naming rights look to be among the oldest financial products around.

![An ancient mosaic depicts a horned bull drinking from rippling water, surrounded by floral patterns, with three weathered metal discs resting on the tiles.](https://rews.cc/img/827ea8411c3cbb4183db5bbcb8ad22e55a2d2e4f.webp)

## The site

Hadrianoupolis lies in the historical region of Paphlagonia. In the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods it grew into a regional centre with churches, baths, houses and cemeteries, and its animal mosaics have earned it the nickname [“Zeugma of the Black Sea”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrianopolis_in_Paphlagonia). Investigations started in 2003. The Church of the Four Rivers stands out among its religious buildings for its size and for the quality of its surviving mosaics. Arkeonews says researchers generally date it to the fifth or sixth century AD, though the exact date is uncertain. An [earlier study of the building](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356717560_Hadrianoupolis_Dort_Nehir_Kilisesi_Kilise_B), long listed in publications as Church B, places its construction probably in the early sixth century, with use possibly continuing into the seventh. The building was altered after an episode of destruction. Later, parts of the complex became burial ground, with graves that earlier studies dated to roughly the seventh to ninth centuries. They held human remains along with rings, earrings, bracelets and brooches.

The four-rivers theme turns up elsewhere too: in early churches at Tegea in Greece, at Madaba and Umm er-Rasas in Jordan, at Qasr Libya in Libya and at Ohrid in North Macedonia. Earlier studies called the Hadrianoupolis version the only known example of its kind in Anatolia. The abstract calls it a rare Anatolian example of Old Testament iconography in this much detail. Mosaics from the period keep [surfacing in the region](https://rews.cc/a/six-1-600-year-old-mosaics-unearthed-at-a-roman-complex-in-s-5c04dc), but few come with the labels written on.

If the reading is right, a community in Byzantine Anatolia paid to have prudence, courage, temperance and justice laid into the floor, and then spent every service walking across them.