Battle of Issus mosaic reconstruction. Restorers working on a reconstruction of the 1st century BC mosaic depicting the Battle of Issus (333 BC) between the forces of Alexander the Great and the Persian Emperor Darius III. A large photograph of the mosaic is seen in the background. The mosaic was found in the ruins of Pompeii, near Naples, Italy. The original is kept in the archaeological museum in Naples, but this copy was installed in Pompeii in 2005. The reconstruction, which took place in CISIM, in Ravenna, Italy, took 22 months and used around 2 million mosaic tiles (tesserae).