The painting was discovered in August in an underground tomb near Iznik, a town in northwestern Turkey that secured its place in Christian history as the place where the Nicene Creed was adopted in AD 325.<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV recently visited the town as part of his first overseas trip.<\/p>\n
At the time, the region was part of the Roman Empire, and the tomb in the village of Hisardere is believed to date to the 3rd century, a time when Christians still faced widespread persecution.<\/p>\n
The Good Shepherd fresco depicts a youthful, clean-shaven Jesus dressed in a toga and carrying a goat across his shoulders.<\/p>\n
Researchers say it is one of the rare instances in Anatolia where Jesus is portrayed with distinctly Roman attributes.<\/p>\n
Before the cross was widely adopted as Christianity’s universal symbol, the Good Shepherd motif played a key role in expressing faith, indicating protection, salvation and divine guidance.<\/p>\n
Despite its central role in early Christianity, however, only a few examples of the Good Shepherd have been found in Anatolia and the one in Hisardere is the best preserved.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press was the first international media organisation granted access to the tomb.<\/p>\n
Lead archaeologist Gulsen Kutbay described the artwork as possibly the “only example of its kind in Anatolia”.<\/p>\n
The walls and ceiling of the cramped tomb are decorated with bird and plant motifs. Portraits of noble men and women, accompanied by slave attendants, also decorate the walls.<\/p>\n
Eren Erten Ertem, an archaeologist from Iznik Museum, said the frescoes showed “a transition from late paganism to early Christianity, depicting the deceased being sent off to the afterlife in a positive and fitting manner”.<\/p>\n
The excavation uncovered the skeletons of five individuals, anthropologist Ruken Zeynep Kose said.<\/p>\n
Because of poor preservation, it was impossible to determine the ages of two of them, but the others were two young adults and a six-month-old infant.<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV visited Iznik last month to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea that produced a creed, or statement of faith, that is still recited by millions of Christians today.<\/p>\n
Joined by patriarchs and priests from the eastern and western churches, Leo prayed that Christians might once again be united.<\/p>\n
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented a tile painting of the Good Shepherd discovery to Leo during his visit.<\/p>\n
Anatolia witnessed pivotal moments in Christian history: St Paul was born in Tarsus, St John spent his final years in Ephesus and the Virgin Mary may have lived her last days near the same city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The painting was discovered in August in an underground tomb near Iznik, a town in northwestern Turkey that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,898,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-189601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-latest-news-ticker","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}