Image Details

Zev Radovan

“Lord, we went,” Domine ivimus in Latin, declares the inscription below this graffito of a pilgrim ship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Discovered in 1971, the graffito dates to before 335, when the wall on which it had been painted was covered by new construction. The inscription may be an allusion to Psalm 122, whose Latin translation begins, “In domum Domini ibimus,” “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

Identified by most Christians as the place of Jesus’ tomb, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was in centuries past—as it is today—the most revered destination of pilgrims to the Holy Land.