The 'lost' altar has been discovered hiding in plain sight inside one of the world's most extensively researched historic sites.
Within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified and buried, researchers have found the largest known medieval altar - which had been considered lost for decades.
After its unveiling in 1149, the magnificently carved ‘high altar’ made a great impression on visitors for many centuries, until it abruptly disappeared from public view following a major fire in the Romanesque part of the church in 1808.
“Since then, the ‘Crusader’s altar’ was lost - at least that’s what people thought for a long time,” says Ilya Berkovich, historian at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW).
So Berkovich and archaeologist Amit Re’em from the Israel Antiquities Authority were shocked when they made their sensational discovery right in the middle of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
In a rear corridor of the publicly accessible church, a stone slab weighing several tons had been leaning against the wall for an unknown period of time. People even left graffiti all over the front side of the slab. When it was turned around due to construction work, it revealed its true, much older artistic heritage.
“The fact that something so important could stand unrecognized in this of all places was completely unexpected,” said Berkovich, who co-authored a recently published article (in Eretz-Israel, Volume 35, 2024).