The Last Supper with Jesus is one of the iconic stories from the Bible. Two thousand years later, archaeologists believe they have found the exact location of the house where the Last Supper took place, writes Daily email .
Researchers believe the Biblical supper took place in the “upper room” of a two-story house with limestone walls and a red pitched roof. This building still stands in the city.
The fact is that the place of the Last Supper was depicted in detail in several works of art dating back to at least the 4th century BC.
The Bible also details the story of the Last Supper in 33 AD, when Jesus gathered with his twelve apostles and said that one of them would betray him, and that Jesus’ own death was inevitable.
It is known that the upper room of the biblical building, also called the upper room, was a prayer room that could accommodate more than 120 people.
Luke 22:11-13 briefly described this room when Jesus asked for a large, furnished upper room where he and his disciples could eat the Passover meal.
The Upper Room is located in the Old City of Jerusalem on Mount Zion, which is above the South Gate. Columns support the building’s vaulted ceiling and sloping red roof.
Archaeologists are currently unable to excavate at this site, meaning they cannot accurately confirm the building’s history.
In 1884, Greek Orthodox Christians found one of the earliest maps of Jerusalem. The discovery was made during the construction of a new church in Madaba, Jordan.
The map was created in 560 AD to depict the Holy Land, with a Cardo Maximus (main street) running through the center, as well as two sacred structures on the south side (bottom right), recognizable by their red roofs. All objects were labeled in Greek, including the Damascus Gate and square on the left, the South Jaffa Gate at the bottom, and Bethlehem on the right.
But it wasn’t until 2017 that religious scholar David Christian Clausen of the University of North Carolina noticed something unusual on the map. The building had the same red sloping roof as the Upper Room and was located on the same site. This is what led scientists to believe that the Cenacle was the site of the Last Supper, but more evidence was still needed.
And they appeared in a 6th century drawing discovered in Italy in 1846. The drawing shows Jesus riding on a donkey through the southern gate of the city, with the Upper Room in the background.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) decided to test the theory in 2019 using laser technology and advanced photographic images. Using technology, scientists wanted to remove all the renovations the Upper Room had undergone over the years to see what it was like during the Last Supper.
“I felt like I was in Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code. There were ancient symbols to decipher,” said Amit Reem, Jerusalem district archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The researchers mapped every corner of the room to create an accurate model of the space, which revealed interesting features of the upper room. They displayed little-known works of art such as symbols of the Agnus Dei, or ‘Lamb of God’, and the Lion of Judah on the ceiling.
“The lion was the symbol of King David, and according to ancient scriptures, Jesus was a descendant of King David,” Reem explains.
Archaeologists still need to do more research, he said. There is still no archaeological evidence that the Cenacle was the site of the Last Supper.
