89 Items
Trench to the east of the 1938 church, recorded as Intervention 7 after third day of excavation
This shows the progress of the excavation after three days and then images of the day's work with pictures taken from both the church roof and the (modern) kitchen roof looking NW towards the trench.
Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Archaeology, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Excavation, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Trench to the east of the 1938 church, recorded as Intervention 7 after second day of excavation
This shows the trench after two days of work from above, and also shows a view of a cutting in the trench.
Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Archaeology, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Excavation, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Trench to the east of the 1938 church, recorded as Intervention 7 after first day of excavation
This picture was taken from the church roof looking east and shows that the first day of excavation had revealed the top of a substantial stone wall.
Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Archaeology, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Excavation, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Trench to the east of the 1938 church, recorded as Intervention 7 before excavation
Intervention 7 was the reference given to the first trench opened to the east of the 1938 church. This site was chosen because of the belief that the church had contracted in size over time, with local informants claiming that a range of interlocking 'beehive' mud brick chambers had made up the earlier shrine on the site, itself built on the remains of a still earlier church. These images show the site of the trench before excavation commenced looking east from the roof of the church.
Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Archaeology, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Excavation, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Chains in front of the altar in the Church of Mar Elian
The local people believe that Mar Elian is able to cure mental illness and until the recent past it was usual to chain those suffering with such an illness in the church for three nights. The chains were left in place until the dismantling of the 1938 church in 2004. The practice of sleeping in the church for three nights to pray for healing was continuing at the time that these pictures were taken, but the chains were not used.
Type: Ethnographic information/Social History
Tags: Chains, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Healing, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Qaryatayn, Syrian Civil War
Visit of the Community of al-Khalil (Deir Mar Musa) to the excavations at Dayr Mar Elian
The Community of Al-Khalil visited from Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi at the end of the 2004 season to tour the excavations at their daughter house of Dayr Mar Elian.
Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Deir Mar Musa, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Mar Musa al-Habashi, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Gathering information on local history
Over the duration of the project efforts were made to talk to local people to collect their memories of the monastery. The older inhabitants of Qaryatayn could remember the small mud brick shrine that stood over the sarcophagus until the modern church was built on the site in 1938. The eastern range of the cloister had also had a range of mud brick rooms until the 1980s, when termite damage caused them to collapse leaving only the south east tower and one other chamber still standing. Until this collapse the monastery was inhabited by Bayt Habib, a Christian Bedu clan. Members of this family, especially the family patriarch Abu Nasif, were amongst the most knowledgeable of the local informants.
Type: Ethnographic information/Social History
Tags: Bedouin, Bedu, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Ethnographic information, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Social History, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Visits of Cardinal Musa Daoud to Dayr Mar Elian
Cardinal Musa Daoud was formerly Syrian Catholic Metropolitan of Homs before being elevated to the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate in 1998. However he swiftly resigned the Patriarchate after being named Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in November 2000, a post that he held until 2007. As a native of Meskaneh in Homs province, the Cardinal had a special devotion to the shrine of Mar Elian and visited it annually to celebrate a mass at the site. Here two such visits in 2001 and 2003 represented in these photographs.
Type: Ethnographic information/Social History
Tags: Cardinal Musa Daoud, Church, Dayr Mar Elian, Ethnographic information, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Social History, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Glass vessel fragments
Fragments from a glass vessel that was found in Dayr Mar Elian.
Type: Archaeological Find
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Archaeological Finds, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Glass, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Vessel
Dayr Mar Elian panorama
This is a panorama of the old cloister looking west, with the new church and graveyard to the rear of the picture. The image was taken by a Lebanese visitor to the site in 2009 after the excavations had been completed.
Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Church, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Syria