Byzantine marble fragments rediscovered in a Tyre cistern

Abstract

The Franco-Lebanese mission in Tyre identified a stone dump comprising more than a thousand fragments of architectural members and liturgical furnishings, located in an ancient cistern. These fragments, mainly of marble, but also of limestone, basalt and marine sandstone, had been collected during excavation works carried out on the site in the 1960s and 1970s. After their discovery, all the blocks were removed from the cistern, inventoried, documented and studied in order to identify their various functions and origins. A large part of these fragments seem to have belonged to various Byzantine religious monuments. The article presents the main types to which these fragments have been assigned, following a comparative approach.

Keywords

• Tyre
• Byzantine
• marbles
• church
• chancel
• decoration