Image Details

Courtesy of Gabriel Barkay

A GLIMPSE OF FORMER GLORY. This colorful mosaic fragment depicting a partridge, grape vine tendrils and the hind quarters of a ram was found amid the scattered ruins of a Byzantine church (fifth–sixth centuries C.E.) just north of the Ketef Hinnom caves. Although later quarrying disturbed much of the building’s foundations, excavators were nonetheless able to identify the basilical plan of a traditional Byzantine church.