The Site
Since at least the fourth century AD a structure identified as the Cenacle, the site of the Last Supper, has been a popular Christian pilgrimage site on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. It is documented in the narratives of many early pilgrims such as Egeria, who visited it in 384. The building has experienced numerous cycles of destruction and reconstruction, culminating in the Gothic structure which stands today.
While the term “Cenacle” refers only to the “Upper Room,” the site is connected to other sites of interest, including a large cenotaph-sarcophagus located on the lower level of the same building, said first by 12th century Crusaders to be the tomb of King David. However, most scholars consider this attribution to be incorrect; 1 Kings 2:10 says that David was buried “in the City of David,” an area of Jerusalem geographically disparate from Mount Sion. The Cenacle is also connected to the Church of the Dormition.
Read more about this topic: The Upper Room
Famous quotes containing the word site:
“I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)