Turkey unveils rare Christian artefact during the pope’s visit

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed a recently discovered rare and ancient Christian fresco on Thursday, in a gesture to mark Pope Leo XIV’s first official visit abroad. 

In Ankara, Erdogan presented the pope with a tile depicting Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The tile is a replica of a fresco excavated in the city of Iznik, at an archaeological site dating to the early Byzantine period. 

One of the main reasons for the pope’s visit to Turkey is to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, which was held in what is now Iznik. 

Turkish officials told Middle East Eye that the Good Shepherd fresco, located at the Hisardere Necropolis, is the only known early Christian-era example of its kind outside Italy. 

The fresco, dated to the third century CE, was unearthed on the north wall of a richly decorated burial chamber earlier this year. It is considered the best-preserved example of its type ever found in Anatolia. 

A Turkish official familiar with the discovery told MEE that a papal team which visited Iznik earlier this month to prepare for the pope’s visit was deeply impressed by the fresco. 

Scenes of the Good Shepherd were widely used in Roman funerary art, before becoming central motifs in early Christian imagery.

Unique outside Rome

Similar depictions, archaeologists note, are found only in three underground tombs in Italy – in Rome’s catacombs of Priscilla, Domitilla and Callixtus. 

The newly discovered scene portrays a beardless young Christ in a simple tunic, carrying a ram with large horns on his shoulders, flanked symmetrically by two goats. 

Archaeologists from the Iznik Museum and the Turkish Ministry of Culture also found evidence that the necropolis was in use between the second and fifth centuries CE. 

Unlike in other previously discovered painted tombs, human figures feature prominently, alongside animal and vegetable motifs. 

Experts note that Good Shepherd imagery represents a transition from pagan to Christian artistic expression. 

The west wall of the tomb depicts a married couple, believed to be its occupants, portrayed as aristocrats through their attire and adornments. 

The symposium scene illustrated here at the tomb, despite being in a Christian-era tomb, reflects continuing pagan funerary traditions that symbolise the afterlife as an eternal banquet. 

During his first official foreign visit, Pope Leo will also tour the remains of an ancient basilica submerged in Lake Iznik, believed to be the site where the Council of Nicaea convened in 325 CE. 

One of early Christianity’s most significant gatherings, the council brought together bishops from across the Christian world to resolve key theological disputes that shaped early doctrine.

The pope and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox Church are expected to jointly commemorate the anniversary in Iznik, which was known as Nicaea in the Roman era.