Project Description

2017 to 2022 | Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem | Israel Antiquities Authority

The Chapel of Saint Helena, beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is traditionally the place where Helena, mother of Constantine, found the True Cross. Its walls, its stairway and the spaces behind its altars carry thousands of carefully engraved crosses, popularly attributed to Crusader pilgrims, although some researchers place them in the late Middle Ages.

The research set out to date the crosses, to test whether they can be treated as graffiti, to identify who made them, and to understand their meaning. My part, together with Moshe Caine, was the imaging: photogrammetry, laser and structured light scanning, RTI, gigapixel imaging and LiDAR, each used at different stages of the study.

Team. Coordinator: Dr. Amit Re’em, Israel Antiquities Authority. Partners: Prof. Moshe Caine and Dr. Doron Altaratz (Hadassah Academic College), Dr. Y. Tchekhanovets (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev).

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