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Zubair ‘Adawi

Abstract

Khirbat el-Maṣani‘ is located about 4 km northwest of Jerusalem, along a secondary road that led from Lod to Jerusalem via en-Nabi Samwil. The site includes the remains of a Byzantine-period triple-apsed church, which was part of a monastery or a pilgrims’ hostel. Abel had suggested that the church be identified as the New Church of Saint Zachary, built by Priest Sabinus. The site was surveyed several times in the past, including during the extensive Jerusalem Survey, and a limited excavation was conducted at the site by Gabi Mazor, exposing the facade of two of the apses. In 2017, a salvage excavation at the site unearthed a large architectural complex comprising the monastery/hostel and, most prominently, the church. The findings allow us to draw preliminary conclusions regarding its plan, construction methods and date. Two small burial chambers and a cist grave were hewn in the floor of the central apse, near its western end. The cist grave contained a human skeleton draped in what seemed to be an armor of iron rings that covered its neck, hands and feet. The skeleton may have been that of an ascetic monk, who chose to be clad in chains within the church or its vicinity. Although a rare Byzantine-period find, both locally and regionally, this phenomenon is attested both in historical sources and in the archaeological record. Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Historia Religiosa, for instance, tells of numerous chained monks who lived in Syria and of a chained monk who lived in the Jerusalem area; a similar chain-clad skeleton was unearthed in 1991 by Elena Kogan-Zehavi at Khirbat Ṭabaliya (Giv’at Ha-Maṭos), between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Two niche-like hewn cells in the eastern bedrock wall of the church, above the apses, suggest that at least two ascetic monks chose to live confined in these self-depriving cells within the church. This method of asceticism—living in seclusion, wrapped in chains inside a closed cell—began in Syria in the fourth or fifth century CE and spread southward, at least to the Jerusalem region.

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