- Altar found in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre
- Hidden for centuries despite visitors
- Cosmatesque style indicates papal approval
Near the alleged burial and resurrection site of Jesus, archaeologists discovered a long-lost altar.
Construction workers discovered the graffiti-covered massive stone slab leaning against the wall of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre when they turned around.
The stone, which was eight feet long and five feet wide, was decorated with ribbon embellishments, a common Roman practice during the Middle Ages, and had particular marks that led researchers to assume it was the altar consecrated in 1149.
A fire in 1808 is believed to have destroyed the altar. ‘For historians, this find is a sensation in multiple ways,’ stated the researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), who made the discovery.
They wrote: ‘Firstly, the fact that the slab could have remained hidden for so long in such an exhaustively examined building as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—especially because it was in front of thousands of pilgrims and tourists every day—is remarkable.’
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is known for being the site of both Jesus’ crucifixion and tomb, and it receives over four million people annually.
Built on top of a Roman temple honoring the goddess Venus in 335 AD, the chapel has a diameter of about 5,400 feet.
The Roman emperor Constantine I ordered the construction, and during the conversion, people believed a tomb to be that of Jesus, who had died about 300 years earlier.
The Persian army damaged the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 614, nearly destroyed it in 1009, and again engulfed it in flames in the 1800s, when it was believed that the altar had vanished.
Tourists had long graffitied the front-facing portion of the stone, which could explain why it went unseen for millennia.
However, the odd ornamentation on the wall-facing side led the researchers to the so-called ‘Cosmatesque.’
The researchers claim that only guild masters in papal Rome, who passed it down from generation to generation, carried out this unique marble embellishment production technique.
‘One distinguishing quality of this technique was the masters’ ability to decorate enormous surfaces with modest amounts of valuable marble.
‘In medieval Rome, marble was primarily scraped from historic buildings, requiring Cosmatesque craftsmen to maximize whatever marble they could obtain.
‘Their solution was to attach little marble pieces with extreme accuracy, resulting in complicated geometric designs and sparkling embellishments.’
Cosmatesque artworks are thought to be valued by the Pope; thus, few have been discovered outside of Rome, and just one at Westminster Abbey is found outside of Italy.
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The scholars assert that the Pope must have approved the construction of the Cosmatesque altar recently discovered in Jerusalem.
The Pontiff reinforced Christianity’s claim to Jerusalem by sending one of its Cosmatesque masters to the Kingdom of Jerusalem to construct the new high altar in Christianity’s holiest church.
Continuous renovations have resulted in historical treasures at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
In 2016, a conservation crew from the National Technical University of Athens discovered a limestone burial slab inside Jesus’ tomb that had been covered in layers of marble since at least 1555.
According to Christian belief, Christ’s body was put on a slab cut from a limestone grotto after being crucified by the Romans.
Scripture states that he resurrected three days after his death, and the women who came to anoint his body reported finding no bones.
The evidence for this is not conclusive, according to Dan Bahat, a former district archaeologist in Jerusalem and Galilee.
‘We may not be entirely positive that the Holy Sepulchre Church is the place of Jesus’ burial, but we surely have no other site that can lay a claim quite as substantial, and there is no reason to doubt the site’s authenticity,’ Bahat said.
2018 saw the discovery of dozens of crosses, thought to be Crusader graffiti, dotting the church’s walls.
In 2021, archaeologists discovered that pilgrims seeking more assurance of salvation paid 15th-century masons to create the carvings.
