LOT 0780

Byzantine Red Marble Fragment from the House of Ananias in Damascus

CIRCA 6TH CENTURY A.D.

3 1/4 in. (182 grams, 82 mm).

Corner piece with polished face; an old handwritten label to the side reading 'Stone from "Ananiani's" house Damascus May 1861'. [No Reserve]

Found Damascus, Syria, in May 1861.
UK private collection.
Property of a Nottinghamshire gentleman.

With a late 19th century handwritten identification label attached.

See S., Kościelniak, K., ‘The Churches of Damascus according to Ibn ‘Asākir (d. 1176), The Destruction of the Church of St. John the Baptist by Caliph Walīd I’, in Rocznik Orientalistyczny, Vol. LXIV, Z.1, 2011, pp.133-139, p.135.

The Chapel of San Anania is a religious building located in a two-room crypt in Damascus, approximately four meters below the current street level, reachable by descending a staircase of twenty-three steps from the courtyard of a house that traditionally is attributed to Ananias, the Christian martyr who helped Saul (who became Paul the Apostle), baptised him and helped him hide and leave Damascus, after he had attracted the hatred of the Jews who had organised his killing. It is an apse of an Eastern Roman basilica from the 5th-6th century, cited several times by Arab historical sources such as al-Mussalabeh (of the Holy Cross), brought to light by the excavations carried out by the count Eustache de Lorey.