40 Collections
Jerusalem
The ancient city of Jerusalem is located at the heart of the Holy Land and lies in the Judean Hills with the Dead Sea to the East and the Mediterranean to the West in modern-day Israel. It has spiritual significance to followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. According to tradition, Jerusalem is where Solomon built his great temple, it is the place of Christ’s Passion and where the Prophet Muhammad visited on his Night Journey. Its history has long been (and unfortunately still is) a very turbulent one and its holy sites have long been fiercely fought over.
In terms of Jerusalem in the New Testament narratives, during the final week of His life Christ made His triumphal entry into the city upon an ass. Christ gathered together His Disciples for a Passover meal on Mount Zion at what is referred to as the Last Supper. The Garden of Gethsemane was the place Christ prayed whilst over-looking the holy city and where he was later arrested. He was tried before Pontius Pilate, Crucified on Golgotha and His body was entombed nearby. Following the Resurrection, He Ascended into Heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Pilgrims began to venerate these sites in the years immediately following His death. However, it was only by the fourth century and with the legalisation of the religion under the Emperor Constantine I that these holy sites were rediscovered. Constantine endowed churches built at the sites of the Crucifixion and Resurrection (the church of the Holy Sepulchre) and the site of the Ascension (the Eleona on the Mount of Olives). Vast numbers of pilgrims soon began to visit the city of Jerusalem to see, touch and venerate these holy sites. Whilst a great deal of the ancient city’s fabric is still extant, very little of its Late Antique history is visible to pilgrims and tourists today. Much of it lies beneath the modern city, which has sadly been built upon in recent years.
Creator: Lucy O'Connor
Date of Visit: 1st July to 8th August 2013, 8th October to 6th November 2014
Contributor: Lucy O'Connor
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons
unless otherwise indicated
Type: Architecture
Kars
Kars Province is situated in the far east of modern day Turkey in the northern half of the region. It borders modern day Armenia and lies with Georgia to the north in close proximity. In antiquity and until the 20th century the area was an important region for the Armenian people who inhabited it. The most impressive relic of the Armenian peoples in the region is the ancient abandoned city of Ani. The modern provincial capital, Kars, preceded Ani as an Armenian capital. The region was bitterly contested by the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the 19th century. Kars still exhibits some signs of its Russian past in the style of some of its architecture.
This file contains some images of the Cathedral of Kars taken in May 2015. Ani, while in Kars province, is considered in its own separate collection.
Creator: Joshua Bryant
Date of Visit: 16th May 2015
Contributor: Joshua Bryant
Khevsureti
Khevsureti is located in the high Caucasus north of Tbilisi bordered to the west by the Military Highway leading to Stepantsminda and the Russian border and abutting Tusheti to the east, although the two mountain cultures can only reach each other on foot or on horseback in the summer months by crossing the Atsunta Pass. The Khevsurs are known, like the Tushes, for their pagan culture and they are renowned for their traditional handicrafts. They are famous for their beautiful hand-stitched tunics worn by both men and women in which cross motifs play a prominent part. Khevsurs are legendary in Georgia for the fact that their men wore chain mail well into the C20th and, like the Tushes, they managed to retain their traditional pagan faith well into the modern era, although it is now being supplanted by Christianity. The upper region of Khevsureti beyond the Datvisjvari (Bear-Cross) Pass is cut off from the rest of the country in the winter, although the villages south of the pass are accessible throughout the year. As with Svaneti and Tusheti, Khevsureti has its own distinctive form of defensive tower architecture and the two most complete examples of this can be seen at Shatili and Mutso, both north of the Datvisjvari pass near the border with Chechnya.
Creator: Emma Loosley
Contributor: Emma Loosley
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Architecture
Late Antique tokens in the British Museum
Creator: Lucy O'Connor
Contributor: Lucy O'Connor
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Museum Exhibit
Nazareth
Nazareth is situated in northern Israel, between the Jordan Valley and the Jezreel plain and to the west of the Sea of Galilee. It has long been venerated by Christians as the place of the Annunciation where the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce that she will bear the Son of God who should be named Jesus. It is also thought to contain the site of Joseph’s home and workshop. This collection of photographs was taken during fieldwork in July - August 2013.
Creator: Lucy O'Connor
Date of Visit: 1st July to 8th August 2013
Contributor: Lucy O'Connor
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Architecture
Palmyra
Palmyra is the Roman name for the oasis city in central Syria that was called Tadmor by the Arabs. It was a major trading centre that reached its apogee in the first centuries AD before entering a decline as Roman-Sasanian hostilities disrupted the ancient trade routes on which the city depended for its prosperity. This decline continued during the Arab period and it was only in the C20th that the settlement expanded again. This was due to several factors; modern transport facilitating relatively easy access for tourists to the site's spectacular ruins and also the fact that a notorious prison for political dissidents was built besides the modern town of Tadmor and a large garrison of Syrian military personnel were accordingly based in the city. In May 2015 the site was overrun by the so-called Islamic State terrorist group and is now critically at risk.
Creator: Emma Loosley
Contributor: Emma Loosley
Joshua Bryant
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Architecture
Raqqa 
Raqqa is currently synonymous with IS, but before the Syrian Civil War it was known throughout Syria as an early centre of Islamic civilisation renowned for its high quality ceramics. The region was also rich in Roman and Late Antique settlements and before reaching its height in the middle ages.
Creator: Emma Loosley
Contributor: Emma Loosley
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Archaeological find
Resafa
Resafa is the Arabic name for the late antique city in central Syria south of the Euphrates that was known as Sergiupolis. It is believed to be the place where the two Roman soldiers Sergius and Bacchus were martyred for their Christian beliefs, an event traditionally dated to 297. The images in this collection were taken in on three specific occasions. The majority of the pictures come from a field visit in 1997. In October 1998 thousands of Syrian and Lebanese Christians gathered at Resafa to celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the martyrdom of SS. Sergius and Bacchus (they knew that they were a year late....) and the second set of pictures records that event. Finally there are some images of the site taken in 2010.
Creator: Emma Loosley
Contributor: Emma Loosley
Joshua Bryant
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Syria 1962
These images were taken by John Ingham on a visit to Syria in 1962 and offered to the archive to enable a comparison of how the sites may have deteriorated over the 50 years since they were taken. This record is especially valuable as several of the buildings in this collection have now been destroyed by the so-called Islamic State.
Creator: Emma Loosley
Contributor: John Ingham
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Architecture
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
At the time of Christ’s Crucifixion on Golgotha, the site was originally located outside the city walls of Jerusalem. However, new walls enclosed the holy site in the year 44 AD. In the second century, the written sources reveal that pilgrims venerated the site even though a temple dedicated to Aphrodite covered it. Legend states that the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine I, rediscovered Golgotha, the True Cross and the Lord’s Tomb in 326 AD and the church of the Holy Sepulchre was soon built to commemorate it.
Creator: Lucy O'Connor
Date of Visit: 1st July to 8th August 2013, 10th October to 6th November 2014
Contributor: Lucy O'Connor
Rights: Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type: Architecture