Echoing Gospel account, traces of ancient garden found under Church of Holy Sepulchre

Some 2,000 years ago, olive trees and grapevines likely grew on the land where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem stands today, new archaeological excavations at the site have revealed.

The findings mirror a description of the area included in the Gospel of John.

“Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus,” reads John 19:19-20.

The presence of olive trees and grapevines was identified through archaeobotanical and pollen analysis on samples retrieved from the excavations under the floor of the ancient basilica. From the archaeological context and strata, it belongs to the pre-Christian era, however, radiocarbon testing has not yet been carried out.

“We know that the area was already part of the city at the time of Emperor Hadrian when the Romans built Aelia Capitolina,” said Prof. Francesca Romana Stasolla of the Sapienza University of Rome, referring to the Roman city erected on the ruins of Jerusalem in the first half of the 2nd century CE. “However, at the time of Jesus, the area was not part of the city yet.”

According to Christian tradition, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on the spot where Jesus was crucified (known as Calvary, or Golgotha) and on its nearby tomb, which today is surmounted by an aedicule built in 1810.

Stasolla has been directing the current excavations since they commenced in 2022.

In 2019, after decades of in-fighting, the three central religious communities managing the church, the Orthodox Patriarchate, the Custody of the Holy Land, and the Armenian Patriarchate, agreed to significant renovations to replace the building’s floor, mostly dating to the 19th century.

The endeavor has marked the first major restoration project in the basilica since the aftermath of a fire in 1808.

The archaeological excavation received a license from the Israel Antiquities Authority, as required by law for any dig in the country.

On a sunny, summer-like March afternoon, the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City appeared quiet and almost empty of visitors, as the simmering geo-political tensions still keep most tourists away from Israel and Jerusalem.

Once one reached the compound where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands, however, the atmosphere changed, with a constant stream of people entering and exiting the site to the soundtrack of incessant drilling and banging. Workers blended with worshipers and priests, carrying tools and construction materials inside and outside the church. An intense fragrance of incense completed the visitors’ sensory experience.

“With the renovation works, the religious communities decided to also allow archaeological excavations under the floor,” Stasolla said, as she sat down with The Times of Israel for the first comprehensive interview she has given since the beginning of the excavations.

“However, at the moment, we do not have any digging area open, as the church is getting ready for Easter, when it needs to be fully accessible by pilgrims,” she noted.

The researcher emphasized that due to the sensitive nature of the site and its logistical needs, they have had to work with extreme caution.

All archaeologists participating in the excavations are Italian and affiliated with La Sapienza University.

“We take turns, but our team in Jerusalem always includes 10 or 12 people,” said Stasolla. “The atmosphere here is very special; we have been welcomed warmly and built strong relationships with everyone.”

Occasionally, experts in specific fields, such as geologists, archaeobotanists, or archaeozoologists from Rome, join the archaeologists in Jerusalem.

“However, most of our team remains based in Rome, where we send the data for the post-production work,” Stasolla explains.

Caution: Men (and women) at work

Walking around the church, one cannot help but notice the temporary floor laid down to ensure that people can continue to visit while some corners are closed off.

To allow maximum accessibility to the site throughout the excavations, Stasolla and her team divided the area into non-contiguous zones, digging one at a time and covering each one again before digging in the following.

“While we have not been able to see the entire church excavated in one glance, new technologies are allowing us to reconstruct the bigger picture in our labs,” Stasolla said. “If we were talking about a puzzle, we could say we are only excavating one piece at a time, but eventually, we will have a complete multimedia reconstruction of the full picture.”

Over the centuries, the Holy Sepulchre has endured multiple cycles of destruction and restoration.

The first structure was erected in the fourth century by Constantine, the first emperor who converted to Christianity. The church was set on fire by the Persians in the seventh century and attacked by caliph al-Hakim in 1009. A significant restoration under Crusader rule in the 12th century gave the building its current appearance.

According to Stasolla, the hidden layers beneath the church’s floor, similar to the pages of a book, have offered an extraordinary chronicle of the history of Jerusalem, starting with the Iron Age (1200-586 BCE).

“The church stands on a quarry, which does not surprise us because a vast part of the Old City of Jerusalem stands on a quarry,” said Stasolla. “The quarry was already active in the Iron Age. During the excavation, we found pottery, lamps, and other everyday objects dating back to that period.”

As the quarry ceased to be exploited and before the church was built, part of the area was used for agriculture.

“Low stone walls were erected, and the space between them was filled with dirt,” said Stasolla. “The archaeobotanical findings have been especially interesting for us, in light of what is mentioned in the Gospel of John, whose information is considered written or collected by someone familiar with Jerusalem at the time. The Gospel mentions a green area between the Calvary and the tomb, and we identified these cultivated fields.”

Findings dating back to Constantine

At the time of Jesus, the former quarry was also used as a burial site, with several tombs hewn in the rock, as in other Jerusalem areas.

“We need to imagine that as the quarry was progressively abandoned, tombs were carved at different levels,” Stasolla said. “The area, therefore, featured several burials from that period. Constantine selected the one that had been venerated as the tomb where Jesus was buried, and he excavated around it in the area that corresponds to the current rotunda, isolating it from the other burials.”

Several other tombs are known as part of the Holy Sepulchre compound, including one that Christian tradition attributes to Joseph of Arimathea, who is said to have gifted Jesus his empty burial plot.

Stasolla and her team uncovered several findings likely dating back to the fourth century.

“Under the current aedicule, we found a circular basis that is part of the first monumentalization of the tomb, made out of marble,” she said. “It is interesting because the most ancient depictions of the aedicule, which date back to the 5th and 6th centuries, describe it as circular. We therefore believe that this circular basis was part of the original structure built by Constantine.”

Additional tests on the artifact, measuring around six meters (nearly 20 feet) in diameter, might offer researchers further insights into the history of the ancient monument.

“We are conducting geological analysis to verify the origin of the marble, and we are also testing the mortar,” said Stasolla. “Both tests can give us important information.”

Another finding that certainly dates to the fourth century is a hoard of coins retrieved in the eastern part of the present-day rotunda, whose earliest coin was minted under Constantius II (337–361 CE), and the latest coins under Valens (374–378 CE).

The researchers have also found hundreds of animal bones, butchered and eaten throughout the millennia by priests and pilgrims.

A preliminary report on the excavation published in the peer-reviewed journal, “Liber Annuus,” in 2023, describes the content of a structural trench associated with the Crusader period and a modern manhole pit.

In both cases, the remains included sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, geese, and pigeons, but also an abundance of fish. The identified fish species included a ponyfish from the Indo-Pacific Ocean and a cod from the Atlantic.

“We also found several shells of terrestrial snail that belonged to a species eaten to this day,” Stasolla said. “This species originated here and spread around the Mediterranean after the Crusades.”

The archaeologist emphasized that a clearer view of how the diet of those who lived and visited the Church changed over the centuries will be possible only after the many analyses the bones need to undergo.

The scientific documentation of all the excavation findings, including some 100,000 fragments of pottery, will take years.

The excavations, however, are set to resume after Easter and will likely be completed within a few months.

“We only have a part of the northern aisle left to excavate,” Stasolla said.

Asked whether archaeology will ever answer the question of whether Jesus was indeed buried at the Holy Sepulchre, Stasolla noted that it is important to keep faith and history as two distinct fields.

“However, it is the faith of those who have believed in the holiness of this site for millennia that has allowed it to exist and transform,” she said. “This is true for all holy sites.”

“The real treasure we are revealing is the history of the people who made this site what it is by expressing their faith here,” she added. “Whether someone believes or not in the historicity of the Holy Sepulchre, the fact that generations of people did is objective. The history of this place is the history of Jerusalem, and at least from a certain moment, it is the history of the worship of Jesus Christ.”