{"id":10752,"date":"2024-06-06T11:24:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T15:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=10752"},"modified":"2024-06-06T11:24:31","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T15:24:31","slug":"ancient-wall-give-hints-to-christian-pilgrimages-1500-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/06\/ancient-wall-give-hints-to-christian-pilgrimages-1500-years-ago.html","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Wall Give Hints to Christian Pilgrimages 1,500 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_10758\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10758\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10758\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/06\/1500-yo-drawing_credit-oli-Schwartz-Israel-Antiquities-Authority.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10758\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yoli Schwartz \/ Israel Antiquities Authority<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A Byzantine -period church discovered by archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) bears wall art that may give clues about the pilgrimages of Christians through Gaza 1,500 years ago. The settlement is a site in the northern Negev Desert, dating from the end of the Byzantine period and the beginning of the Islamic period. \u201cThese intriguing drawings may have been left by Christian pilgrims arriving by ship to the Gaza port \u2014 their first inland stop was this Rahat church; continuing from here on to other sites throughout the country,\u201d said IAA excavators.<\/p>\n<p>The site is about a half day\u2019s walk from the ancient port of Gaza and right along an ancient Roman road, making it a likely site for Christian pilgrims to pass through. \u201cIt 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,\u201d said the IAA scholars. The scholars theorize that the images of ships drawn on the church wall \u201care a greeting from Christian pilgrims arriving by ship to Gaza port.\u201d According to the scholars, \u201cPilgrims [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.\u201d Prof. Deborah Cvikel of the University of Haifa\u2019s maritime civilizations department described one of the images in detail. \u201cOne of the ships drawn on the church walls is depicted as a line drawing, but one can see 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 depict the path beaten by the oars through the water. Ships or crosses left by visiting Christian pilgrims as witness to their visit are found also in Jerusalem\u2019s Holy Sepulchre church.\u201d Pilgrims also left behind drawings of crosses according to Cvikel.<\/p>\n<p>IAA Director Eli Escusido called the find \u201cintriguing.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThis 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. It also provides firsthand evidence about the ships they traveled in and the maritime world of that time.\u201d The discoveries will be available for viewing by the public for the first time on June 4 at the Rahat Municipal Cultural Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Byzantine -period church discovered by archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) bears wall art that may give clues about the pilgrimages of Christians through Gaza 1,500 years ago. The settlement is a site in the northern Negev Desert, dating from the end of the Byzantine period and the beginning of the Islamic period.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":10758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ancient Wall Give Hints to Christian Pilgrimages 1,500 Years Ago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The settlement is a site in the northern Negev Desert, dating from the end of the Byzantine period and the beginning of the Islamic period.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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