Archaeological discovery sheds light on Christian pilgrimages to Holy Land 1,500 years ago

Israel Antiquities Authority excavation in Rahat (aerial view), May 2024. / Credit: Emil Aladjem/Israel Antiquities Authority

Jerusalem, May 23, 2024 / 10:31 am (CNA).

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have discovered a Byzantine-period church in the northern Negev desert with wall art displaying ships. The surprise findings were announced in a press release issued by the authority on May 23.

The discovery was made in the south of the Bedouin city of Rahat, where the Israel Antiquities Authority has been conducting excavations for several years in the context of a city expansion project. The excavated site tells the story of settlement in the northern Negev desert at the end of the Byzantine period and in the beginning of the early Islamic period.

According to the excavators, “these intriguing drawings may have been left by Christian pilgrims arriving by ship to the Gaza port; their first inland stop was this Rahat church, continuing from here to other sites throughout the country.”

This site, in fact, lies only a half-day’s walk from the ancient port of Gaza, and the church is located along an ancient Roman road that led from the coast to Beer Sheva, the Negev’s main city.

According to the excavation directors — Dr. Oren Shmueli, Dr. Elena Kogan-Zehavi, and Dr. Noé David Michael on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, together with Professor Deborah Cvikel of the University of Haifa’s Department of Maritime Civilizations — it is reasonable to think that Christian pilgrims traveled this road to reach the Christian holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and the monasteries in the Negev hills and in the Sinai.

“It is reasonable that their first stop after alighting from the ships in Gaza port was this very church revealed in our excavations south of Rahat,” the scholars said.

The ships drawn on the rock “are a greeting from Christian pilgrims arriving by ship to Gaza port,” the excavation directors said. “Pilgrims [who] visited the church left their personal mark in the form of ship drawings on its walls. The ship is indeed an old Christian symbol, but in this case, apparently, it is a true graphical depiction of real ships in which the pilgrims traveled to the Holy Land.”

Cvikel described one of the drawings: “One of the ships is depicted as a line drawing, but yet it may be discerned that its bow is slightly pointed and that there are oars on both sides of the vessel. This may be an aerial depiction of the ship, though it seems the artist was attempting a three-dimensional drawing. It may be that the lines below it portray the path beaten by the oars through the water.”

“Ships or crosses left by visiting Christian pilgrims as witness to their visit are also found in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulcher Church,” she added, highlighting a common practice of the pilgrims at that time.

The reference is probably to the famous ship of the “Domine Ivimus,” the only image of a vessel found at the Holy Sepulcher (while the crosses are countless). It’s a charcoal drawing, dating between the second and fourth centuries, found on a stone used in a very ancient wall located in the foundation area of the basilica, in the part that is owned by the Armenians.

“This surprising and intriguing find of ship drawings in a northern Negev Byzantine-period church opens a window for us to the world of Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land 1,500 years ago,” Israel Antiquities Authority Director Eli Escusido said. “It also provides firsthand evidence about the ships they traveled in and the maritime world of that time.”