Tomb of Jesus back to glory
Site neglected for 200 years
JERUSALEM — The tomb of Jesus has been resurrected to its former glory.
Just in time for Easter, a Greek restoration team has completed an historic renovation of the Edicule, the shrine that tradition says houses the cave where Jesus was buried and rose to heaven.
Gone is the unsightly iron cage built around the shrine by British authorities in 1947 to shore up the walls. Gone is the black soot on the shrine’s stone facade from decades of pilgrims lighting candles. And gone are fears about the stability of the old shrine, which hadn’t been restored in more than 200 years.
“If this intervention hadn’t happened now, there is a very great risk that there could have been a collapse,” Bonnie Burnham of the World Monuments Fund said Monday. “This is a complete transformation of the monument.”
The fund provided an initial $1.4 million for the $4 million restoration, thanks to a donation by Mica Ertegun, the widow of Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records. Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas chipped in about 150,000 euros each, along with other private and church donations, Burnham said.
The limestone and marble structure stands at the center of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, one of the world’s oldest churches — a 12th century building standing on 4th century remains. The shrine needed urgent attention after years of exposure to environmental factors like water, humidity and candle smoke.
A restoration team from the National Technical University of Athens stripped the stone slabs from the shrine’s façade and patched up the internal masonry of the shrine, injecting it with tubes of grout for reinforcement. Each stone slab was cleaned of candle soot and pigeon droppings, then put back in place. Titanium bolts were inserted into the structure for reinforcement, and frescos and the shrine’s painted dome were given a face-lift.