Newly Found Holy Box Has Yet To Reveal What It Used To Hold

Archaeologists recently dug up an ancient reliquary in Austria, and they are hopeful that it will eventually reveal what holy treasures it once held.

Since 2016, the archaeologists have been excavating a hilltop site in the municipality of Irschen, according to a Universität Innsbruck press release. Three years ago, they made a startling discovery: a marble shrine, "measuring around 20 by 30 centimetres," buried beneath the altar of a long-abandoned church.

Within that shrine were fragments of a very specific kind of ivory box called a pyx, which was typically adorned with Christian imagery and used to hold a relic connected to some prominent place or figure within the faith.

The clergy or congregation would often take the pyxes when a church was abandoned, so the archaeologists were surprised that this particular pyx remained within the ruins.

"We know of around 40 ivory boxes of this kind worldwide," archaeological team leader Gerald Grabherr said in the press release, "and, as far as I know, the last time one of these was found during excavations was around 100 years ago—the few pyxes that exist are either preserved in cathedral treasures or exhibited in museums."

"Ivory, especially ivory stored on the ground like in the marble shrine, absorbs moisture from its surroundings and is very soft and easily damaged in this state," Ulrike Töchterle, who heads the restoration workshop in Innsbruck, said in the press release. The larger pieces, over the centuries, have become deformed, making it impossible for the team to physically reconstruct the pyx in its entirety. However, they’re working on a 3D reconstruction.

After a prolonged drying process, the archaeologists revealed what they discovered about the pyx — and what they hope to find in the future.

The pyx’s decoration, the team determined, draws a connection from the biblical figures of the Old Testament through to what they believe is a depiction of the Ascension of Christ. Its imagery begins on one end with a depiction of a figure at the foot of a mountain, "turning his gaze away and a hand rising out of the sky above him, placing something between the person’s arms." Grabherr notes that such imagery is "the typical depiction of the handing over of the laws to Moses on Mount Sinai, the beginning of the covenant between God and man from the Old Testament."

The pyx then depicts a series of more biblical figures before concluding with an image that might be unrecognizable to those only familiar with the more contemporary visual depictions of the New Testament. It shows a man riding in a two-horse chariot as a hand emerges from the clouds to pull the chariot to heaven. This, the team believes, is meant to portray Jesus Christ’s ascension into heaven, albeit in a manner not typically depicted.

"The depiction of scenes from the Old Testament and their connection with scenes from the New Testament is typical of late antiquity and thus fits in with our pyx," Grabherr said of the imagery. "However, the depiction of the Ascension of Christ with a so-called biga, a two-horse chariot, is very special and previously unknown."

But there’s so much left to learn about the pyx. For example, where did the ivory that made the pyx, or the marble of the shrine that held it, come from?

"On the one hand, we still need to determine the exact origin of the marble," Töchterle said regarding the goal of the analysis currently underway, "and we also want to specify the origin of the ivory and the elephant using stable isotope analyses. Metallic components — the hinges of the pyx were made of metal—are also still being examined, as is the glue that was used for the ivory."

In addition to the metal found with the pyx — the reliquary’s hinges — the archaeologists also uncovered fragments of wood. "We are particularly interested in the type of wood and its origin, and the age is also of interest to us," Töchterle said. That’s because, while the team says the wood was likely part of the pyx’s original clasp, it "cannot be completely ruled out" that the wood is actually the relic the pyx was intended to protect, she said.