Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/FAIZ ABU RMELEH/Middle East Images/AFP/Shai Halevi/Israel Antiquities Authority
Topics: History, Science, Religion, World News
Ella Scott
Topics: History, Science, Religion, World News
Austrian archaeologists have revealed details of an ‘sensational’ discovery made at one of the holiest sites in Christianity.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century institution nestled within the Old City of Jerusalem.
The site is considered one of the holiest in the world as Christians believe the area is where Jesus was buried and later rose from the dead.
Experts have recently flocked to the church following the news that construction workers were awestruck upon turning over a chunk of seemingly worthless marble.
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The stone, which had been sitting in a publicly accessible corridor near the rear of the building, measured eight feet long and five feet wide.
On the side facing the public, the marble was covered in graffiti.
However, when the stone was flipped around, revellers saw that the other side was decorated with ribbon ornaments and distinct markings.
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Upon further inspection, it was declared that these unique decorations were made using a special production technique called ‘Cosmatesque’.
The art form was once practised by guild masters in papal Rome and saw large surfaces being covered with smaller quantities of precious marble.
Excitingly, archaeologists have since identified the slab as the front panel of the altar consecrated in 1149.
Historians previously believed the largest-known medieval altar, used by Crusaders in the Middle Ages, had been destroyed in a fire in 1808 and thus lost for decades.
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“For historians, this find is a sensation in several respects,” wrote the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW).
While remarking on the brilliance of the find, researchers also questioned how the important slab had ‘remained hidden for so long in such an intensively researched building as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre’.
Speaking about the significance of the altar Ilya Berkovich, historian at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, said: “We know of pilgrim accounts from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries about a magnificent marble altar in Jerusalem.
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“In 1808, there was a major fire in the Romanesque part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” said Berkovich. “Since then, the Crusaders’ altar was lost - at least that’s what people thought for a long time.”
This discovery, hailed as ‘sensational’ by the OeAW, is thought to have been created with the Pope’s blessing.
Moreover, they write that it was commissioned to honor Christianity’s holiest church as Cosmatesque art was a cherished status symbol.
“The Pope thus paid tribute to the holiest church in Christianity,” Berkovich said.
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Following the recent discovery of the altar, the expert and his team hope to research further and dive into the papal archives to reveal more details about the stone.
They also want to uncover the Cosmatesque master who created the artwork.