In 2012, workers who were building a cable car in Turkey’s Hatay Province came across something no one expected underground.
It was a mosaic nearly 2400 years old, made in the III century BC, featuring a skeleton reclining beside a wine jug and a piece of bread. Beside it, an inscription in ancient Greek said something both simple and devastating: be cheerful, enjoy your life.
It was not a macabre warning or a curse. According to archaeologists, it was a reminder of mortality intended for banquets: death comes for everyone, so make the most of what you have now. Two thousand four hundred years later, the message remains intact, and the same truth still hurts.
