Archaeologists are moving closer to revealing the exact room where Jesus ate the Last Supper as the search focuses on
The Last Supper—the final meal Jesus had with his apostles before he was crucified—is one of the most iconic stories in the Bible.
Now, 2,000 years later, archaeologists are trying to find its exact location in Jerusalem.
They believe the biblical encounter took place in the “Upper Room” of a two-story house with limestone walls and a red, sloping roof, which still stands in the town.
The site is mentioned on several works of art dating back to at least the fourth century AD. It was during this period that Christians first visited the space to commemorate Christ’s final moments of freedom before the crucifixion.
And thousands of people still visit the Upper Room every year.
Thousands of Christians visit the Upper Room in the Cenacle building each year, believed to be the place where Jesus had the Last Supper. Pictured: Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper
The Cenacle is part of the original church that contained the Upper Room (pictured) and was a center for Jewish Christians to celebrate Jesus. It was the only part of the building spared when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD.
The Bible tells the story of the Last Supper in 33 AD, when Jesus met with his twelve apostles and told them that one of them would betray him. He also said that his death was imminent.
He blessed the bread and wine, explaining that this was a symbol of His body that would be broken and the blood that He would shed for the forgiveness of their sins.
The Upper Room, also called the Cenacle, was originally a prayer room that could accommodate over 120 people.
The space is briefly described in Luke 22:11-13, where Jesus requested a large, furnished upper room where he and his disciples could eat their Passover meal.
The Cenacle is located in the Old City of Jerusalem on Mount Zion, above the southern gate. It was built with large, branching columns supporting a vaulted ceiling and a sloping red roof that remains today.
Because researchers have not been able to conduct archaeological excavations, they cannot confirm whether the building existed at the time of the Last Supper.
In 1884, Greek Orthodox Christians discovered what is believed to be the oldest map of Jerusalem while building a new church in Madaba, Jordan.
The map was created in 560 AD as a representation of the Holy Land. The map shows the Cardo Maximus (main street) stretching across the central section and two sacred buildings on the south side (bottom right), recognizable by their red roofs.
All the landscapes were described in Greek, including the Damascus Gate and plaza on the left, the southern Jaffa Gate at the bottom, and Bethlehem on the far right.
But it wasn’t until 2017 that David Christian Clausen, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, noticed something unusual: There was a building with the same red, sloping roof as the Cenacle, and it was in the same location.
This led researchers to suspect that the Upper Room was the location of the Last Supper. However, more evidence was needed, which was provided by a sixth-century drawing discovered in Italy in 1846.
The drawing shows Jesus traveling on a donkey through the southern gates of the city, with the Cenacle in the background.
This story is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, which states that Jesus entered Jerusalem to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah that there would be a “second coming of Jesus Christ” and that the dead would be raised.
The story goes, ‘Tell the city of Zion, “Look, your king is coming to you! He is lowly and riding on a donkey and on a colt the foal of a donkey.”
Another depiction of the site was discovered in 1585 AD: a fourth-century carving showing Jesus standing before Mary Magdalene after his resurrection. Just behind the spot where he stood was a building with the same sloping roof.
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus returned to the Upper Room after his resurrection, which connects the depiction of him and Mary Magdalene to the Biblical story.
However, some archaeologists argue that the statue depicts Christ standing before an unknown kneeling woman asking him to heal her, rather than representing his resurrection.
The Madaba Mosaic (pictured) appears to show the structure in the right corner of the map, next to Hagia Sion
Another sixth-century BCE drawing from a Gospel manuscript shows Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the gate he is approaching appears to be in the southern wall of the city (see image)
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) set out to test this theory in 2019 by using laser technology and advanced photographic imaging to remove all the changes made to the Cenacle over the years and reveal how it originally looked during the Last Supper.
“I felt like I was in Dan Brown’s book, ‘The Da Vinci Code,’” said Amit Re’em, Jerusalem district archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Fox news at the time. ‘We had to decipher the ancient symbols.’
They mapped every corner of the room to ‘create accurate models of the space’, revealing interesting features in the Cenacle.
The newly created images showed ‘obscure’ art, such as the symbols of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and the Lion of Judah on the ceiling.
“The lion was the symbol of King David,” Re’em told Fox, explaining that “according to ancient writings, Jesus was a descendant of King David.”
An artistic representation that appears to show the Upper Room (circled on the left) was discovered in a carving from a fourth-century sarcophagus. It shows the Son of God healing a woman or comforting Mary Magdalene after his resurrection.
The Cenacle (pictured) is still not generally accepted as the Upper Room and its old, worn surfaces and poor lighting have hampered archaeologists in their investigation of the space.
According to Re-em, researchers need to do more research. He says there is still no archaeological evidence that the Cenacle was the location of the Last Supper.
The IAA has previously said that poor lighting, faded walls and ongoing renovations have prevented further research at the site.
“From time to time, as we get the opportunity, we continue to document other parts of the sacred complex,” Re’em told Fox.
‘I hope that in the future we may have the opportunity to conduct a small-scale classical archaeological investigation.’
DailyMail.com has contacted the IAA about its plans for future investigations.