An account of the newly discovered church, north of the Damascus Gate,
Jerusalem, appears in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine
Exploration Fund. The author is Dr. Selah Merrill. The ruin has proved
to be one of great extent, and of special interest. The way in which it
was brought to light is worth recording. In an uneven field, which rose
considerably above the land about it, parts of which appearing, indeed,
like little hillocks, the owner of the soil tried to maintain a
vegetable garden, but the ground was so dry that neither grain nor
vegetables would flourish, and even irrigation did little or no good;
besides, here and there large holes appeared in the ground which could
not be accounted for. At last the owner determined to dig and see what
there was below the surface of his field, and to his surprise he very
soon came upon fine walls and a pavement. The excavations being followed
up have laid bare a church with some of the surrounding buildings. The
amount of _débris_ which had accumulated above the floor of these
buildings was 10 to 20 feet in depth. To remove this mass of earth has
required much time and labor, and the work is not yet completed. The
piece of ground in question has about 60 yards of frontage on the main
road, and extends, so far as the excavations go, about the same distance
back from the road, that is, to the east.
The church itself is situated on the south side of this plot, and is
very near the street. The ground in front of the church is paved with
fine slabs of stone. The steps by which the church was entered were 5
feet wide, but the doorway itself was somewhat wider. From the entrance
to the altar step, or platform, the distance is 55 feet, and from that
point to the back of the apse 15 feet 6 inches; the width of the apse is
16 feet 6 inches. The width of the church is 24 feet 6 inches. Nine feet
in front of the altar step a wall has been thrown across the church in a
manner similar to that in the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. This
wall, also those of the church, of which several courses remain, and the
interior of the apse, show that the building was originally painted, and
some of the figures and designs can still be traced. At the southeast
corner of the church, leading from the apse, there is a narrow but well
built passageway to the buildings in the rear. The character of these
buildings is not very evident; certainly they did not stand on a line
with the church, but at an angle of 25° with that line. Between the
church and what appears now to have been the main building in the rear,
there was a passage not over 3 feet wide. The main building in the rear
of the church is 47 feet 6 inches long, but to this must be added 20
feet more of a special room, which seems to have belonged to it, and
which had a beautiful mosaic pavement. Thus the extreme length from the
entrance of the church to the (present) east side of this mosaic floor
is 140 feet.
On the west side of this mosaic floor, where it joins the wall of the
main building, there is a threshold of a single stone, 9 feet 6 inches
long, with a step 6 feet 9 inches in the clear. This is considerably
wider, it will be seen, than the steps, and even the entrance of the
church. Several patches of mosaic pavement have been found, but in one
place two or three square yards have been preserved, enough to show that
the work was extremely beautiful. The colored tracings resemble those in
the church on the Mount of Olives, and on one side are the large Greek
letters [Theta][epsilon][omicron][nu]. North of this mosaic floor, and
of the main building which joins it, and running alongside of both,
there is a watercourse or channel cut in the solid rock, which has been
leveled to accommodate the buildings above. This can be traced in an
east and west line for a distance of 37 feet; it is 2 feet 3 inches
deep, 20 inches wide at the top and 12 at the bottom. From about the
middle of the mosaic floor this channel turns a right angle and runs 20
feet or more to the north; it is possible that it led _from_ the north,
and at the point indicated turned a right angle and ran to the west.
Piles of stones and _debris_ prevent us at present from deciding as to
the length of the channel or where it comes from. In the bank of
_debris_, which rises on the east side of the mosaic floor to a height
of 20 feet, there is, about 6 feet above the floor, a watercourse formed
of cement, running north and south at right angles to the line of the
church and the other buildings, which must have belonged to a much later
period. In fact--and this is an interesting circumstance--the mosaic
pavement appears to extend under and beyond this canal and the mass of
_debris_ which is yet to be removed.
In the northwest corner of the room, where the mosaic floor is found,
very near the angle (already mentioned) of the rock-cut channel, there
is a tomb about 6 feet below the surface or level of the floor. The tomb
is 10 feet long and 9 feet wide, and is entered by a doorway 26 inches
wide, which is well built, and in the sides of which are grooves for a
door to slide up and down. On the wall of the tomb at the east end there
is a raised Greek cross, 22 inches long and 13 inches wide. One cannot
stand erect in its highest part, but it is to be considered that the
loculi are two-thirds full of _debris_, composed chiefly of decayed
bones and bits of glass. Those in charge of the excavations have not, up
to the present time, allowed the tombs to be cleared out. The loculi are
2 feet in depth.
What Captain Conder speaks of as "vaults north of the church," turn out
to be the tops of houses. They are four in number, each 75 feet long by
28 feet wide, and faced the street. They were divided (one or two of
them at least) into apartments by means of arches. The lower courses of
the walls, to the height of several feet, are of squared stones, while
the upper portions and the roofs are of rubble work, which was covered
with a heavy coating of plaster. The threshold of one has been exposed,
which is 6 feet in the clear, and the sides of the doorway show
excellent work.
Among the ruins there are two sections of marble columns, each 33 inches
in diameter. Three large cisterns have been found, two of which were
nearly full of water; the mouths of these, which were closed, were many
feet below the surface of the ground before the excavations began, hence
no one knows how old the water in them may be. Some of the slabs with
which the church was paved were 6 feet long by 2½ feet wide. In the
church two pieces of cornice were found, each 8 feet in length. One is
entire and quite plain, while the other is broken in the middle. It is
upon this that the figures of Christ and his twelve apostles were
painted. They can still be traced, although exposure has nearly
obliterated the colors. Pottery and a considerable quantity of broken
glass have been found and some small articles in marble of no great
value. The top of a certain block of marble has been formed into a
basin, and a hole drilled the entire length of the block for the water
to run off.
South of the mosaic floor and of the east end of the main building there
is a large underground chamber with seven openings (each the size of a
man's body) to the surface. The chamber is 12 feet wide and nearly 20
feet long, but the depth is not yet ascertained, owing to the
accumulation of _debris_ on the bottom. On the west and north sides a
wall of solid rock appears to a depth of 6 feet, showing that the
chamber was excavated in part at least in the solid rock. The use of
this chamber does not appear evident, unless it may have been a store
room. The place within the city shown as "Peter's Prison" consists of a
similar chamber (not dug in the solid rock, however), with similar
openings in the ceiling or roof. The ruins extend underground some
distance to the east of the mosaic floor, and efforts are being made to
purchase the land in that direction, in order to allow of the
excavations being extended there. It is almost equally certain that the
buildings extended to the south and southeast of the present plat of
ground. But the owners of the land are jealous, and everybody is
superstitious; consequently, excavations must be abandoned, or move with
aggravating slowness.
Dr. Selah Merrill, in a note describing a late visit, says that the west
wall of what he called the "main building," toward the apse of the
church, has been removed and the floor cleared, exposing a fine
pavement. This pavement, the threshold before mentioned, and the mosaic
floor all belong to one period, and to a structure very much older than
the date of the "main building." It puzzled the doctor, because the
threshold west of the mosaic floor was not square with the east wall of
the "main buildings," but the reason is now clear. Captain Conder says
of this church with such of the ruins about it as were exposed when he
was there, that "the whole is evidently of the Crusading period." As
regards the church itself, this is not clear, and the mosaic floor
especially may belong to a time many centuries previous to that era. At
the south side of the floor of the "main building" a new mouth to the
largest cistern has been discovered; over the mouth there is a thick
stone 5 feet in diameter. This was eight sided, and was built against
the wall, so that five sides are exposed. The stone was cut in such a
way as to leave on two of its sides small brackets shaped like the two
halves of the utensil called a "tunnel." It may be of interest to state
that this piece of land was offered for sale a few years since, and for
a long time went a begging for a purchaser; at last it was sold for 40
Napoleons. During the present year it has passed into the hands of the
French for 2,000 Napoleons.
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