Early Christian fish: excavations provide insights into church construction
Archaeologists of the University of Münster examine basilica in south-eastern Turkey
Archaeologists of the University of Münster have uncovered an early Christian basilica in south-eastern Turkey. The team of researchers led by Prof. Engelbert Winter spent eight weeks exposing richly ornamented mosaics with images of fish as well as painted marble reliefs. “These finds cast a new light on the development of church building in the Near East between the 4th and 7th centuries AD,” explains Engelbert Winter, professor at the Asia Minor Research Centre in the Department of Ancient History at the University of Münster.
In 2015, an international team under the direction of the Asia Minor Research Centre at Münster University began examining the ancient town of Doliche on the outskirts of the modern city of Gaziantep in south-east Turkey. In antiquity, Doliche was a small town in the north of Syria and was especially important as a religious centre. The main god of the town, Jupiter Dolichenus, was worshipped in many parts of the Roman Empire. The primary objective of the project, carried out with funding from the German Research Foundation, is to undertake research into how the town developed and how its inhabitants lived, from the Hellenistic and Roman periods to the Christian world of late antiquity and then the early Islamic period.