Documents an Arab registration in the last supper room.Less
Biblical tradition argues that the Cenacle – a room on the upper floor of a building in Jerusalem has historically believed above the tomb of King David – is where Jesus shared the last supper with his apostles before being crucified. Consequently, many Christians consider the healthy site and travel great distances to visit it.
With the help of technologies such as ultraviolet and infrared filters and multispectral photography, a team of international researchers has now deciphered several dozen old inscriptions engraved on the walls of the room between the 14th and 16th centuries. The marks include signatures, sentences and coat of arms, and they highlighted the identities of medieval pilgrims, and how diverse they were.
“When assembled, inscriptions provide a unique overview of the geographic origins of pilgrims,” said Ilya Berkovich, historian of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and co-author of a New article on published research In Liber annuus, A Directory of Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. The Jerusalem Research Institute focuses on biblical studies, in particular the sites associated with the New Testament and the beginning of Christianity in the Middle East.
“Altbach.” The image resembles the coat of arms of the modern city of the same name in the south of Germany.Less
The graffiti reflect a record of centuries that remain on the site by the Armenians, the Czechs, the Serbs and many Arabian Eastern Christians.
Among the newly deciphered inscriptions, for example, is one in Armenian who reads “Christmas 1300”. An Arab fragment can be read as “… ya al-ḥalabīya”, a sentence that refers to the Syrian city of Aleppo. Based on the double use of the “Ya” female suffix, the researchers concluded that a Christian pilgrim woman cisellated the words, which makes them a rare material trace of a pre-modern woman.
“At a time when research literature always tilted strongly to the experience of pilgrims from Western Europe, the inscriptions of the Cenacle are a precious recall of the diversity of the Christian flow of pilgrims towards the end of medieval Jerusalem”, reads the article, which describes the collaborative work of the scholars led by Shai Halevi and Michel Chernin of the antiquity of Israle.
Heraldic coat of arms of the Austria century. Directly below, the half -nervous date 14 .. can be seen.Less
The engravings also reveal many traces of European pilgrims, including the autograph, dating from the 1400s, of a German pilgrim named Johannes Poloner, who then wrote a detailed account of his trip to Jerusalem. A heraldic coat of 15th century represents the family crest of a noble of Styria, a state in Austria, and another coat of arms belonged to Adrian I von Bubenberg, a Swiss knight of the 15th century, a military commander and a mayor.
Even in cases where inscriptions could not be linked to a specific person, the researchers say that they always provide important evidence from who the pilgrims and where they came from.
While parts of the inscriptions can be seen in the naked eye, others are too low to detect. This is where technologies such as multispectral imaging came. The technique captures light through a range of spectral bands beyond what the human eye can see. During the photographic effort in 2021 of the team to document all the inscriptions and graffiti on the walls of the Cenacle, the technique revealed the writing and the drawings whose colors had faded beyond recognition.
Why did the pilgrims written on the holy walls?
Today, of course, it would be alarming to see the words “graffiti” and “church” in the same sentence, and those who give off historical sites are often confronted with legal consequences. But also Verboten as the marking of religious spaces now, apparently, it was not unusual for the time.
“The graffiti in the churches of Western Europe have been widespread since this last 13th century,” write the authors of the article. “In the past two generations, it has become a Subject of the interest of animated research. “”
While most deciphered inscriptions seem to have been scratched quickly with a piece of coal or striped with a barrel, the prominent position and the high artistic level of other messages and drawings indicate that they were made with full knowledge, if not the blessing, of the monastery.
What is the story of the Cenacle?
The Cenacle – which has been destroyed and rebuilt several times – is located south of the Porte de Zion inside the walls of the old town of Jerusalem. Most of the graffiti have discovered that he comes from the Middle Ages to the end of the Middle Ages, when the Cenacle became the heart of a Franciscan monastery whose monks helped and guided Catholic pilgrims, although visitors from other confessions were headed for the sacred site.
In 1523, shortly after the Ottoman conquest, the Franciscans were expelled from the Cenacle, and he remained in the Muslim hands until 1948. The echoes of this period could be seen in the epigraphic content of the site.
The Islamic graffiti identified as part of the project include an inscription, and a drawing of a scorpion, which honors the clerk Sheikh al-ʿaǧamī, which was appointed to serve as the first religious supervisor in Ottoman Jerusalem. These engravings contribute to spiritual and political history in layers of the site, reflecting its meaning between confessions and borders.
In honor of Sheikh Aḥmad al-ʿaǧamī.Less
