Sealed bronze medieval reliquary found in Turkey

A rare sealed reliquary cross has been unearthed at the site of ancient Lystra in modern-day Konya, central Turkey. The artifact was found unopened, and is being cleaned and conserved in its original condition to avoid causing irreparable damage to it.

The excavation in the area of the church uncovered graves with metal crosses and jewelry. Several reliquaries were among the finds, and they were all broken, opened, or with only half of it surviving save for one. The intact bronze reliquary cross dates to between the 9th and the 11th centuries. It consists of two covers riveted together permanently. There is no hinge or mechanism to open and close it like a locket. The exterior is decorated with circumpunct (circled dot) and parallel line designs.

Reliquaries held the remains of saints or other sacred artifacts (a piece of the True Cross, a fragment of the veil of Veronica, etc.) and were worn or carried as devotional objects. This one has a suspension mount at the top that suggests it was worn as a necklace. When archaeologists peered inside through a gap, they saw a small piece of a shroud-like textile on top. That fabric could be the relic or it could be covering something else.

Lystra has a very ancient connection to Christianity. In Acts of the Apostles 14:6-18 , Paul and Barnabas heal a paralyzed man and are hailed as Hermes and Zeus incarnate. The crowd is about to sacrifice a bull to them when the two tear off the clothes and insist they are but men come to preach about the One God. Paul visits Lystra again on his second missionary journey, this time with Silas, and meets up with the apostle Timothy before moving on to Macedonia. It had its own homegrown saints too. It became the seat of a bishopric in the 4th century with Saint Amphilochius of Iconium as its first bishop. 

Last year, archaeologists unearthed the remains of a 100-foot-long basilica from late antiquity that was in continuous use until the early Middle Ages. It was richly decorated with gilded mosaics on the ceilings and ornamented walls. Archaeologists believe this was the main church of the city, a basilica of grandeur befitting its status as a bishop’s seat and one of the centers of early Christianity in central Anatolia. The reliquary cross was discovered in the continuing excavation of this church.

* This article was originally published here