Marble slab with three identical cups carved into its top found in cathedral in northern Israel may have held oils for 3-stage baptism and anointment, archaeologists suggest
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Marble slab with three identical cups carved into its top found in cathedral in northern Israel may have held oils for 3-stage baptism and anointment, archaeologists suggest
02:18 AM • April 01 2026 IDT
They were an observant people, the early Christians of Antiochia Hippos. They may even have had a stage in their baptism process that has been lost to memory, surmise archaeologists studying a strange artifact found in a cathedral in the city overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
The Roman-turned-Christian city perched on a clifftop 350 meters over the lake had at least seven churches in the Byzantine period from the fifth and sixth century C.E., mostly operating simultaneously. One of the churches was a cathedral, the biggest known in the area at the time, and it seems baptisms performed there may have differed from today in a least one respect.
In one of its two baptismal halls, the expedition unearthed a unique object, in that nothing like it has been found before in such contexts: a marble block with three hemispheric cavities carved out of its top, excavation directors Michael Eisenberg and Arleta Kowalewska of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa reported in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in March. They cannot explain its function, but have a theory.
This artifact may be rare solid evidence of a forgotten stage in the baptism rite, they suggest. The cup shapes carved into its surface may have housed oils or other sanctified liquids. No known parallel to the object exists in the archaeological record, they add. So it may not only be a forgotten stage but an unusual one.
Another thing hitherto unknown in the archaeological record is the double baptismal halls in the cathedral, which were called photisteria in Greek - meaning "halls of illumination". The cathedral may not have begun that way; the northern photisterion seems to have been built with it in the beginning. The second was added during renovations shortly after 590/1 C.E., the date in inscriptions, the team deduced.
Since they had two, it seems the people used the larger, earlier photisterion to baptize adults and devoted the smaller newly discovered one for immersing infants and children, the team says. They have suggested in past work that the cathedral was not only the biggest church in the town; it was The Place to be baptized. It bears adding that baptismal fonts were not found in the other churches in Hippos.
Note that the cathedral was huge; serial excavation revealed around 1,600 square meters in area for the entire complex. The northern photisterion, the original one, was a cool 130 square meters in area and was plausibly "the largest building dedicated solely to baptism in the Byzantine provinces of Palaestina," they write.
Antiochia Hippos, also known as Sussita in Aramaic, sits on a small plateau about 350 meters over the lake. It was founded by the Seleucids and flourished throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods, ruling over the entire area of the southern Golan and most of the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee, sprawled out at its feet.
Why did it have so many churches? There is no record of Jesus visiting Hippos, let alone performing miracles there.
"We shouldn't be surprised by the coexistence of at least seven Byzantine churches – Hippos was the sole Christian proper city around the lake, with a dominant Christian community," Eisenberg told Haaretz. "The city's bishop not only controlled the city and his cathedral, but also all the city's territory. We should imagine people arriving from farms and villages in the territory, asking to be baptized in the magnificent cathedral, in a city overlooking all Jesus' ministry, just below."
The Byzantines actually built churches around the Galilee to mark and celebrate Jesus' ministry and miracles in the region. A proto-church from the third century was found at Megiddo but around the lake, churches dating from the fourth century onwards have been found at Capernaum and Tabgha, at el-Araj which has been identified as Bethsaida, at Magdala and in Kursi and of course in Hippos.
And just as it had a view of everything below, everything below had a view of it.
"Hippos and its hinterland have surely gained from the worship and the pilgrimage to the sacred sites connected to the ministry of Jesus," Kowalewska and Eisenberg surmise in the article.
Its cathedral was one of the most prominent of the Byzantine ecclesiastic structures around the lake, the archaeologists say. The early Christians didn't have to import precious stuffs to build this key house of worship: they repurposed limestone, marble, and granite from Roman-period buildings.
The unknown but presumably liturgical object was found in a recent excavation of the later, southern photisterion, where the partially preserved room with a second baptismal font was unearthed.
Other discoveries there were more mundane: a bronze candelabrum, though at 105 centimeters long and weighing 7 kilograms, it is the largest ever discovered in Israel, the team says; and a marble reliquary, also the largest of its kind found in the country. They were found in the vicinity of the baptismal font.
"The remains of a lead pipe in situ in the apse above the font are a rare testimony to the 'living water' serving for baptism. In the very early stages of Christianity, the Jordan River was the source of living water, but as Christianity spread, such solutions were preferred," Eisenberg told Haaretz.
It is with these that they observed the strange marble slab with the three carved cup shapes near the baptismal font, suggesting that it served a role in the rite. The block was 42 centimeters long by 17 wide and 12 high, and was heavy, weighing almost 24 kilograms. The three cups carved into its top are identical and the top of the artifact is decorated with stylized lotus leaves.
Why think it liturgical? "At first glance, the block resembles a mensa ponderaria (public measuring table). However, the cavities are identical and have no outlets at their bottoms," Kowalewska and Eisenberg write.
Unable to compare with anything like it found before because none have been, and given its context, they propose that it may have held three different oils for use in a three-stage baptismal immersion ceremony, rather than two anointings.
"Baptismal rites involved threefold immersions, and anointing was often made before and after the immersion," they explain, adding that rites change. It wouldn't be unthinkable for rites to evolve over the last 1,700 years or so.
Leaving its origins aside, baptism was one of the central rites of Christian communal life in the first centuries after Christ and took shape gradually during the Byzantine period, Eisenberg explains.
"In different regions, distinct liturgical traditions developed, many of which are not documented in written sources," he says. "This find offers a rare glimpse into how the baptismal rite was shaped and practiced in the Byzantine Christian community of Hippos."
He and Kowalewska add that the newly discovered photisterion may also have served as a martyrion, based on the extraordinarily heavy (42- kilogram) reliquary also found there. Sadly, it was empty. Given its bulk, they think it may have been made locally from a broken pillar and if it is a reliquary then it suggests the space served not only as a hall of illumination but as a martyrion, commemorating the deeds of a martyr.
The other hall, the northern one, had been dedicated to the saintly brothers Cosmas and Damianus, according to an inscription.
Hippos, now part of the Hippos National Park and managed by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, was a gem of a city. Like all proper Roman cities it had its own theater and by the Christian era, its churches featured spectacular mosaics, and inscriptions.
In the case of the so-called "Burned Church," the inscriptions include ones in Greek written so ineptly that the lingua franca of the residents has been called into question. "There is a nonexistent word," Eisenberg told Haaretz at the time. "There are spelling mistakes throughout the writing."
Their lingua franca being what it may, in contrast to certain assumptions it seems religious life in the city would persist without trouble after the Islamic conquest in the year 635. There is no sign that the new rulers destroyed houses of alternative worship. But in time, the churches too slowly fell into ruin with the city as a whole, as Hippos lost its crown as alpha canid to Tiberias, the city founded on the other side of the Sea of Galilee in 20 C.E., which would become the Islamic regional capital.
In the year 749 there was a terrible earthquake. Hippos had been in decline and it never did recover.
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