Paul Calvert spoke with Dudi Mevorach from the Israel Museum, about the development of Christianity in the Holy Land.

The House of David inscribed on a victory stele

The inscription above it made in plaster was found 40 years ago in the Old City and it is the basement, or water cistern of the largest church that existed in Jerusalem called then the Nea Church, the new church established by Justinian. It mentioned the same two people, Justinian and Constantine the abbot. So these two guys developed Jerusalem for pilgrims 1500 years ago.

So this holy tourism, coming into the land, went through a holy itinerary. They went to see all the holy places. They went through the biblical sites, through the stops in the story of Jesus, through where Jesus passed.

They wanted to see holiness and to touch holiness. They wanted to take it home with them and they did. We find endless number of souvenirs that were taken by pilgrims back to their home land, in Europe, North Africa and any other places. We find them along the tour that they took and sometimes we find here in Jerusalem, souvenirs of people that came from Egypt, or came from Syria, from other holy places.

We find collections of souvenirs of holy places and these souvenirs are in many shapes and forms. A lot of them are flasks, containers, small containers whether ceramic containers or glass containers. On them are imprinted the scenes that describe the holy sites that they were taken from. They contained oil from the holy places, oil that was put on the holy relics and kept in the holy churches, and then poured out into those flasks. They could be taken home as medicine, as remedy or they contained oil from the oil lamps that burned in the holy places.

Sometimes they would take earth and put it into the holy places. For instance the Holy Sepulchre, and take the earth out and form little shaped coins from earth imprinted with the scenes.

We have scenes of the visitation, of the annunciation, of the baptism and all of the stories that we know so well from the gospels, they are on these flasks and coins that pilgrims buy here, as they move from one stop to the other. They take it home and sometimes we find these coins a little bit damaged on the edges. It's not because they were broken. They were used this way. These are ancient aspirins. You take them home and you grind them a bit into a glass of wine or into a flask of oil and drink them as medicine, or as a quality of promising a need that you'd want.

This business of holy souvenirs continues until today. Every holy site that you go to in the Holy Land you'd have a shop with those souvenirs that are offered and we all do buy them to remember those holy places that we visited. We want to have a memorandum from them.

Paul: So these will be 1700 years old are they?

Dudi: Yes, all of these from the cross pendants to those flasks are 1500 years old.

Paul: Thank you very much. It's important when people come to the Holy Land that they visit the Israel Museum, isn't it?

Dudi: It's phenomenal. I think opportunity for people to see in a very short time so much about early Christianity that they don't see in the sites themselves, and a handful of unique finds that are concentrated here at the Israel museum in Jerusalem.