A long-lost altar has been discovered at the Holy Sepulchre, the site thought by many to be the place where Jesus was buried and resurrected.
Construction workers turned around a large stone slab, which had been publicly accessible and was covered in graffiti, to reveal an altar dating back to the 10th Century.
The stone is eight feet long and five feet wide. It features ribbon engravings, which were a common Roman practice during the Medieval era, leading archaeologists to conclude that it was an altar consecrated in 1103.
The altar was previously thought to have been destroyed in a fire in 1808.
Archaeologist Amit Re'em from the Israel Antiquities Authority, and OeAW historian Ilya Berkovich, made the “sensational discovery”.
Historian Ilya Berkovich said: “We know of pilgrim accounts from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries about a magnificent marble altar in Jerusalem.
“In 1808, there was a major fire in the Romanesque part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Since then, the Crusader’s altar was lost - at least that's what people thought for a long time.”
The altar is known as a ‘Cosmatesque’. The marble decoration techniques used for it were practised exclusively by guild masters in papal Rome, who passed the skill down from generation to generation.
In medieval Rome, marble was in scare supply, and typically scraped from ancient buildings, forcing the Cosmatesque masters to maximise the littlemarble they could find.
Their solution was to place small marble pieces together, joining them in complex geometric patterns.
Cosmatesque art was a cherished status symbol for the Pope. Only a few Cosmatesque works of art are known outside of Rome, with only one outside of Rome, in Westminster Abbey, where the Pope had sent one of his masters.
The Cosmatesque altar now rediscovered in Jerusalem must also have been created with the Pope's blessing.
Berkovich said: “The fact that something so important could stand unrecognised in this of all places was completely unexpected.”