Mysterious Medieval Symbols Emerge at the Site of Christianity's Holiest Meal
The Graffiti Left By Medieval Pilgrims At The Cenacle In Jerusalem
According to a new study published in Liber Annuus, a journal of theology and Biblical archaeology, the medieval graffiti at the Cenacle was first detected in the 1990s during restoration work. Using modern technology like ultraviolet filters and multispectral photography, researchers have now been able to decipher 30 inscriptions and nine drawings.
Shai Halevi/Israel Antiquities AuthorityA coat of arms with the inscription “Altbach,” which seemingly came from a German pilgrim.
The researchers found that the graffiti had been left by a myriad of different people from various nationalities during the Middle Ages.
Some of the inscriptions were left anonymously, like the Arabic inscription ending “…ya al-Ḥalabīya,” a seeming reference to the Syrian city of Aleppo, or the Armenian inscription of “Christmas 1300,” which may be related to a famous military victory won by the Armenian King Het’um II in 1299.
Other pilgrims, however, actually left their names. Johannes Poloner, a German pilgrim who traveled to Jerusalem in 1421–22 and wrote a book about his travels, inscribed his name. As did famed Swiss knight Adrian I von Bubenberg, Venetian noble Jacomo Querini, and Franconian count Lamprecht von Seckendorff. Tristram von Teuffenbach, a Styrian nobleman who traveled to Jerusalem in 1436, even left behind a drawing of his coat of arms.
Shai Halevi/Israel Antiquities AuthorityThe graffiti of a pilgrim from Aleppo, in red, which is overlaid with another inscription that hasn’t yet been deciphered.
“Even in cases where these [inscriptions] could not be related to a concrete person, the graffiti provide material evidence of the origin of the pilgrims who visited Mount Sion,” the researchers explained in their study. “These included Armenians, Czechs, Serbs, as well as numerous Arabic-speaking Eastern Christians…[T]he Cenacle’s inscriptions are a valuable reminder of the diversity of the Christian pilgrim flow to late medieval Jerusalem.”
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