Since1994 the Roman Aqaba Project has been uncovering the ancient Roman port of Aila, now within the modern city of Aqaba in southern Jordan. Founded by the Nabateans in the first century BCE, Aila was major international port on the Red Sea.  Products such as frankincense, myrrh, spices, oil, wine, metal items, and fine ceramic tableware were transferred between ships and camel caravans traveling between the Roman Empire and its eastern neighbors. The Romans annexed Nabatea in 106 CE, when Aila became the southern terminus of a great highway, the via nova Trajana, linking Syria with the Red Sea.  The port continued to flourish through the Byzantine period and into the Early Islamic.  The project focuses on Aila’s economy during the Roman and Byzantine periods.

 One structure that has slowly emerged from the sand dunes along the coast is an early Christian church dated to the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century.  

 The identification of the building as a church is based upon its eastward orientation, overall plan, artifacts (such as glass oil lamp fragments), and associated cemetery just west of the structure.  Parallels for smilar but slightly later mudbrick churches are known from Egypt.  A bishop of Aila was present at the council of Nicaea in 325, suggesting that a significant Christian community existed in the city in that period.

 The church (ca 26x16m) was built largely of mudbrick on stone foundations.  There are arched doorways and vaults within the structure.  A stone staircase suggests a second story.  Some walls were decorated with painted plaster, although their fragmentary preservation makes it difficult to discern the original design.  The plan suggests a basilica, with a central nave flanked by side aisles.

 The church was entered via two doorways on the north side, which gave access into a narthex.  East of the narthex is the nave and the chancel area.  A rectangular apse on the eastern end of the building was entered via two arched doorways from the chancel.  A room identified as a sacristy is situated north of the apse.  The church has yielded several hundered coins, the latest dating to 337-363.  The pottery included African Red Slip vessels imported from Tunisia. 

 The date of the building’s destruction is secure.  The latest of over 100 coins recovered from destruction contexts are of Constanius 11 (337-361), specifically from the last decade of his reign in the 350s.  This accords well with the imported African Red Slip pottery and the glass, which also dates to the late third or fourth century.  The church met a catastrophic end, perhaps in the earthquake of May 19, 363, which severely damaged other sites in the region.

 Only in 1998 did the first solid evidence for the date of construction emerge from two deep probes against major walls of the structure.  Pottery from both probes suggested construction in the late third or beginning of the fourth century.  A single coin from the foundations unfortunately proved heavily corroded and its inspection unreadable.  But the size and weight of the coin closely matches post-reform issues of Diocletian minted in the last decade of the third century. This agrees with the dating of the pottery.

In short, this church is among the earliest known in the world.  If the proposed date of construction ca. 300 CE is accepted, it would in fact be the oldest structure in the world built as a church, dating slightly earlier than the churches founded in Palestine shortly after 325 by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. These churches were erected after the Great Persecution between 303 and 311.  But Eusebius (history of the Church 8.1.5) states that many large churches had been built in many cities before the Great Persecution, presumable in the period of defacto toleration from ca 260 – 303.  Perhaps the church at Aila was one of these.  But most of these other early churches where probably victims of the Great Persecution.

 A few earlier buildings used as churches are known, but these were originally constructed as houses and only later converted into churches.  Other early Christian churches have been continuously occupied and rebuilt over the centuries, making their original architecture difficult to discern.  But the newly discovered church at Aqaba was used for less than a century until destroyed in the late fourth century.  The building was then abandoned and quickly filled with wind blown sand, which preserved the walls up to four meters in height.  Thus the original church is extremely well preserved, making this find especially significant.

S. Thomas Parker

North Carolina State University

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