Some 1,300 years ago, in 749 CE, an earthquake struck the Middle East, causing widespread destruction.

The earthquake sealed the fate of the ancient city of Hippos, once a thriving Christian center east of the Sea of Galilee in the southern Golan. There, among other structures, a cathedral hall featuring a baptismal font collapsed in the city’s south, burying its liturgical implements for over a millennium.

The room and its rare contents were recently rediscovered by a team of archaeologists from the University of Haifa, as revealed in a new study published in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly last month.

According to lead author Michael Eisenberg, co-director of excavation at Hippos, one of the artifacts, a marble item with three round indentations, has no known parallel and could offer new insights into unique baptismal practices in the ancient Byzantine city.

“Hippos was the main Christian city on that side of the Sea of Galilee, an area very connected to the ministry of Jesus in the region,” Eisenberg told The Times of Israel over the telephone. “We have recorded seven churches in Hippos. The largest of these churches, the cathedral, was also the seat of a bishop.”

All the churches were built between the fifth and the early sixth centuries CE.

Most of the cathedral was excavated at the beginning of the 1950s, decades before Eisenberg and his team began work at the site in 2000.

The early archaeologists had already unearthed a first hall with a baptismal font — a large, round structure where an adult could fully immerse, fed by a conduit bringing fresh water from a nearby source.

“The bishop and the cathedral were the only ones performing baptisms, not only in Hippos but in the whole region,” Eisenberg said, noting that no other church in Hippos included a baptistery. “They had a monopoly.”

“This baptistery, or photisterion, which in Greek means ‘hall of light,’ as it was referred to at the time, is the largest ever discovered in Israel,” he added.

The southern part of the church was not excavated until 2023. Eisenberg and his fellow archaeologists opened a small excavation area since the site’s paved road runs very close to the building. They were amazed by what they encountered.

“We found another baptismal font, and next to it, a whole archeological treasure of liturgical items exactly as they fell during the 749 earthquake.”

The newly exposed hall features the same type of flooring — red limestone and white marble tiles arranged in a geometric pattern — as other parts of the cathedral, suggesting that, like the rest of the church, it was restored during renovations carried out in 590 CE and documented by an inscription elsewhere in the building. (No inscription was discovered in the southern photisterion.)

The baptismal font in the southern hall is much smaller than the structure in the northern one and does not offer steps to enter it. This detail suggests that the baptistery discovered in the 1950s was used to baptize adults, while the other one was used for babies, who could be briefly immersed or held over it with water poured on them, Eisenberg said.

The archaeologists found several liturgical objects next to the font in the southern hall, including a large bronze candelabrum and a reliquary, or a box for relics of venerated saints.

“​​Some of them are rather unique, though not all of them are necessarily so important from the research perspective,” Eisenberg said.

The object that, more than anything, captured the researchers’ attention was the marble artifact featuring three bowls.

“We found it in the perfect position, stuck between the baptismal font and the other liturgical implements,” Eisenberg said. “It was not there by chance.”

“We’ve consulted with colleagues who specialized in baptismal rites in early Christianity, and they agree that the only logical explanation for the use of this marble block next to the baptismal font is that it was part of the liturgical ceremonies,” he added.

According to the archaeologist, the artifact’s shape strongly suggests that it was used to contain liquids. Eisenberg believes the utensil most likely held different types of oil employed during the ceremony to baptize babies.

“We are familiar with similar implements with one bowl or two bowls, but this could be the first one with three bowls,” he said. “No parallel has ever been found.”

The archaeologist emphasized that at the time Christianity was still developing, and ceremonies were not necessarily held according to a fixed protocol everywhere.

“We don’t have too many sources discussing early Christian [rituals] in different regions,” Eisenberg explained. “We rely on later sources, and some of them hint at the use of different oils [during baptism], not only the olive oil, but other kinds of oils. However, no source speaks directly about three oils being used [in the ceremony].”

“This opens up many questions about local or regional customs for ceremonies and how much we do not know about them,” he said.

According to Robin Jensen, professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame in the United States and an expert on Christianity in antiquity and Christian architecture, there is another possible way of interpreting the object.

She suggested that the marble block could have served as an offering table.

“I have seen objects like that in cemeteries that were meant to hold food offerings for the dead,” said Jensen, who was not involved in the study. “I think one might find something of the sort in an early church — a receptacle for offerings.”

Jensen said that if the interpretation offered by Eisenberg and his co-author Arleta Kowalewska is right and the object was indeed used for anointing oils, it would be unique.

“We don’t have any textual evidence for a triple anointing, although later Christian tradition does, in fact, have three types of oils — oil for anointing the sick, oil of the catechumens, and oil for chrismation,” Jensen said.

“Ancient baptismal rituals, both East and West, regularly have two anointings; one preliminary anointing and post-baptismal chrismation… but I don’t know of any triple anointings,” she added.

The professor also said that she holds Eisenberg and Kowalewska in high regard.

“I regard them as very reliable and the overall study of this new photesterion at Hippos very important; their work is careful, and their discovery is significant,” she said.

The archaeologists also found a large marble reliquary.

“It was sealed, and we were very eager to find out what it contained, but when we opened it, still in the field, it was empty,” Eisenberg said.

The southern hall could have served both as a baptistery and a martyrium, or a room devoted to the cult of martyrs.

“There was no contradiction between the two functions,” Eisenberg said.

According to inscriptions found elsewhere in the church, the cathedral was dedicated to Cosmas and Damianus, two third-century brothers and physicians who embraced Christianity and were killed by the Roman authorities, and whose cult was very popular in Syria, Palestine (as the Roman province was known) and Arabia.

The reliquary might have contained their bones or other objects connected to their life.

Eisenberg explained that the city’s demise began long before the earthquake, and that the relics might have been removed by Christians who left the city before it was finally destroyed and abandoned.

“Hippos’ decline started in the late sixth century [CE] and dramatically accelerated after the Muslim conquest in 636, not because of the invasion itself, but because [the new rulers] moved the regional capital to Tiberias,” the scholar noted. “All the churches at Hippos continued to function, but most of them progressively closed some of their spaces, starting to use them for agricultural purposes instead. It seems that there were not enough residents there.”

The cathedral continued to function until it was destroyed by the earthquake.

“When Christian believers left a place, holy relics were the first thing they brought with them,” Eisenberg said.

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