On the island of Sir Bani Yas off the coast of Abu Dhabi, archaeologists have discovered a rare artifact - a plaster slab with the image of a cross, dating back to the 7th–8th centuries.
According to the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT Abu Dhabi), this find was the first major discovery on the island in the last thirty years and definitively confirmed that the houses in the monastery complex, excavated in the 1990s, really belonged to Christian monks.
The shape of the cross refers to the Christian tradition that originated in ancient Mesopotamia. Similar images were found in Iraq and Kuwait, which suggests that the region has close ties with the cultural and spiritual centers of the Middle East.
Today, Sir Bani Yas is a nature reserve with gazelles and damans, but fifteen hundred years ago, monastic life flourished here. The church and monastery, opened back in 1992, were part of a wide network of Christian communities in the Persian Gulf. Christianity spread in the Persian Gulf region between the fourth and sixth centuries, before the advent of Islam in the early seventh century. Experts believe that for some time on the island of Sir Bani Yas, Christian communities coexisted with Muslim ones. However, by the 8th century, the monastery had fallen into disrepair and gradually became desolate.
"The discovery of this ancient Christian cross on the island of Sir Bani Yas is a convincing testimony to the deep and enduring values of the UAE: coexistence and cultural openness," said Mohammed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.
For archaeologists, the find has become a new page in the study of early Christianity and the cultural diversity of the region. "We now know for sure that the monks lived in these houses, retreated and prayed here before gathering in the monastery with their brothers," Maria Gayevskaya, an archaeologist at DCT Abu Dhabi, said. Work on the island continues: archaeologists are exploring the houses in the courtyard of the monastery and plan to include them in the tourist route.