Project Description
2017 to 2022 | Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem | In collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority
Who carved the thousands of crosses on the walls of the Chapel of Saint Helena, and when?
The chapel, 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. For generations they were credited to Crusader pilgrims.
What the record showed
The study led by Amit Re’em of the Israel Antiquities Authority reached a different conclusion: the crosses were made at least three centuries after the Crusaders left Jerusalem. They are arranged with order and planning, some of them high on the apse walls where only a ladder would reach, which points to carvers with free access to the chapel and not to passing visitors.
How it was recorded
My part, together with Moshe Caine, was the imaging that made the walls readable: photogrammetry, laser and structured light scanning, RTI, gigapixel imaging and LiDAR, each used at different stages of the study.
3D model: Chapel of Saint Helena point cloud
Click to load the model; drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.
Team. Coordinator: Dr. Amit Re’em, Israel Antiquities Authority. Partners: Prof. Moshe Caine and Doron Altaratz (Hadassah Academic College), Dr. Y. Tchekhanovets (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev).
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