By Emma Maayan-Fanar, Ravit Linn, Yotam Tepper and Guy Bar-Oz

 

“There is nothing grander than Aujeh and Abdeh, except Esbeita (Shivta)” (E.H. Palmer,The desert of the Exodus. Journeys on foot in the wilderness of the forty years’ wanderings, 1871).

The ruins of Byzantine Shivta in the Negev desert have always been breathtaking and its three monumental churches dominate the landscape.

Map showing the location of Shiva.

 

North Church with Baptistery, Shivta, photographer Dror Maayan.

 

The churches were lavishly decorated, and the scene of The Transfiguration of Christ in the southern apse of the South Church, of which only shreds are visible today, is a clear testimony of paintings that once covered their walls.

This scene, identified in 1914 by pioneering explorers Leonard Wooley and T.E. Lawrence, was further studied only a century later by Pau Figuera. In 2016-17 our team managed to reconstruct precisely the details, postures and movements of the apostles in the scene and to recover one of its most important iconographic elements: the rays of light, unseen by naked eye.

It was generally assumed that no other wall painting at Shivta can be identified with certainty, despite observations made by scholars from the École Biblique in Jerusalem, who visited Shivta in 1926. They discerned two figures on the apse of the Baptistery next to the North Church and even proposed to identify the scene as the Baptism of Christ.

Only in 2017 could the iconography of the scene of the Baptism of Christ be confirmed. Only under a special angle of the sunlight could we make out traces of a youth’s face emerging from the stones of the apse’s upper part. Close study reveals that it is a frontally positioned youth with short curly hair, prolonged face, big eyes and long nose.

Detail of Christ’s face in the Baptistery, North Church, Shivta, photographer Dror Maayan.

 

Christ’s face, drawing by Emma Maayan Fanar.

 

His neck and the upper part of his body are also traceable. The outlines of a face, possibly surrounded by a halo, on the upper left side of the apse belong to another, much bigger figure.

The location of the scene just above the crucifix-shaped Baptist font suggests that it depicts the Baptism of Christ (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-23).

Baptistery, Shivta, photographer Dror Maayan.

 

The scene’s popularity in Early Christian art facilitates this identification. It appears in the catacombs in Rome (e.g., the Peter and Marcelinus catacomb); in illuminated manuscripts (e.g., the 6th-century Rabulla Gospels, Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana, cod. Plut. I, 56, fol. 4v); in numerous small objects; and in churches, monasteries and baptisteries, the most notable examples being the Arian and Neonian baptisteries in Ravenna, c. 500 CE.

The scene usually consists of the two main figures: John the Baptist, standing on the bank of the Jordan River, his right hand placed on the head of Christ, who stands in the water. Consistent with the early Christian iconographic convention, the figure of John the Baptist is proportionally enlarged as compared with that of Christ; Christ is much smaller and younger, in keeping with the symbolic notion of Baptism as rebirth.

In Shivta this proportional distinction is clearly evident as John the Baptist’s head is much larger than Christ’s. A red half-circle above Christ’s head may refer to the River Jordan, an element that appears in several 6th-century scenes (e.g., Fragment of ivory panel, Egypt or Syria, British Museum, 1896,0618.1). Other known iconographic elements, such as a dove descending from the sky, sometimes complemented by the hand of God, fish in the River Jordan, personification of the river, and angels on the river’s opposite bank holding Christ’s garments, are not visible at Shivta. Nevertheless, the compositional arrangement of the two remaining figures, as well as traces of paint elsewhere on the apse, suggests that they constituted part of a wider scene, which might have contained additional figures and motifs.

The facial details of the young Christ, the best surviving part of the Shivta wall painting, can readily be placed in the local iconographic tradition corresponding to the 6th–7th-century images in Egypt and Syro-Palestine. His short curly hair also points in that direction. As Michele Bacci argues, in the 6th century the short-haired image of Christ gradually became replaced by a long-haired image, believed to be more authentic. In the East, Syria, Egypt and Palestine, the short-haired iconography seems to have been longer lasting. This is also attested in the Baptism scenes: while the young Christ in the Arian Baptistery in Ravenna has long hair, images from the East retain short-haired scheme (e.g., the 6th-7th century pilgrim tokens from Qal’at Sem’an [British Museum, 1973,0501.29 and 1973,0501.30]; the 6th-century ivory plaque from Syria or Egypt [British Museum, 1896,0618.1]; or the Armenian Gospels, [Erevan, Matenadaran, MS 2374, fol. 229v.])

Sixth century ivory plaque from Syria or Egypt depicting the baptism of Christ. (https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=265677001&objectId=62023&partId=1)

 

Because little left of the painting, it is very important to continue the detailed research and documentation before any measures can be taken. Its poor state of preservation makes this scheme highly vulnernable. Our goal is to study the painting’s techniques, the materials used, the conservation’s main issues and the best ways to protect the painting. We would like also to compare it with the techniques of other important painted scheme of the Transfiguration in the South Church at Shivta.

The exact date of Shivta’s churches, the North Church in particular, is uncertain. Built first as a mono-apsidal basilica, it was modified into a tri-apsidal basilica in the early 6th century. Built at the northern edge of the settlement bordering on the desert, it is the richest of three churches, with intensive use of marble to clad the walls, floors, inscriptions, columns and pilaster headings.The earliest inscription from the graves in the western part of the Baptistery dates to 612 CE, while the latest inscription is from 679 CE, well after the Islamic conquest of the area. These data, however, do not help us in any way to date the Baptistery or its wall painting.

The importance of the find of the wall painting in the Baptistery of the North Church at Shivta is enormous: it is a rare survival of early Byzantine iconography and an original wall painting in its architectural setting. This finding enriches our knowledge of subjects and techniques used to decorate early Byzantine churches, providing insight into the religious and the cultural life of Byzantine Shivta, and bringing us closer to early Christian representations of the Christ.

 

Emma Maayan-Fanar is a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the University of Haifa. 

 

Acknowledgements

This study was conducted at the Shivta National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage site, under the license of the Israel Antiquities Authority (G-87/2015, G-4/2016) and with the permission of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (6002/16). We are grateful for the assistance of Shivta National Park personnel. This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (648427) and the Israel Science Foundation (340–14).

 

For Further Reading

Bacci, M. 2014. The many faces of Christ. Portraying the Holy in the East and West, 300 to 1300. London: Reaktion.

Figueras, P. 2006. Remains of mural painting of the Transfiguration in the southern church of Sobata (Shivta). ARAM 18/2: 127-151.

Jensen, R.M. 2011. Living water images, symbols, and settings of Early Christian baptism. Leiden: Brill.

Linn, R. Tepper, & Bar-Oz,  G. 2017. Visible induced luminescence reveals invisible rays shining from Christ in the Early Christian wall painting of the transfiguration in Shivta. PLoS ONE 12: e0185149.

Maayan-Fanar, E. 2017. The transfiguration at Shivta: Retracing Early Byzantine iconography. Zograf 41: 1–18.

Maayan-Fanar, E., Linn, R., Tepper, Y., & Bar-Oz, G. 2018. Christ’s face revealed at Shivta: An Early Byzantine wall painting in the desert of the Holy Land. Antiquity 92(364), E8. doi: 10.15184/aqy.2018.150.

Mallon, A. 1930. Le baptistère de Sbeita. Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 10: 227–229.

Margalit, S. 1987. The North Church of Shivta: The discovery of the first church. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 119: 106–121.

Margalit, S. 1989. On the transformation of the mono-apsidal churches with two lateral pastophoria into tri-apsidal churches. Liber Annuus 39: 143–164

Negev, A. 1981. The Greek inscriptions from the Negev. Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum.

Palmer, E. H. 1871. The desert of the Exodus. Journeys on foot in the wilderness of the forty years’ wanderings. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell.

Patrich, J. 2006. Early Christian churches in the Holy Land. In: Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the origins to the Latin Kingdoms. Eds. O. Limor and G. Stroumsa. Turnhout: Brepols.

Rosenthal-Heginbottom, R. 1982. Die Kirchen von Sobota und die Dreiapsidenkirchen des Nahen Ostens. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Segal, A. 1985. Shivta: A Byzantine town in the Negev Desert. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 44: 317–328.

Taylor, J. E. 2018. What did Jesus look like? London, New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.

Tepper, Y., Erickson-Gini, T., Farhi, Y. & Bar-Oz, G. 2018. Probing the Byzantine/ Early Islamic transition in the Negev: The renewed Shivta excavations, 2015-2016. Tel Aviv 45: 120-152.

Tepper, Y. 2018. The archaeological findings from the “Forgotten Suitcase” in Context: In light of the Colt excavations at Shivta and their contribution to the research of the site. Michmanim, in press (in Hebrew).

Wooley C. L. and T. E. Lawrence. 1914. The wilderness of Zin (Archaeological Report), London.