Image Details

Graffiti images cut into the cave’s plaster walls can be interpreted as Christian iconography. According to excavators Gibson and Tabor, the 2.5-foot-high stick-figure of a man depicts John the Baptist wearing a hairy garment and with a staff resting against his left arm. The objects next to his skirt may be a lamb or a vessel on a tripod. Beneath the figure is a hole that Gibson and Tabor suggest once held a relic. The outstretched arm is suggestive of a relic arm of John the Baptist preserved in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. Two crosses are also shown.