La basilique de Ras el Bassit: Une église paléochrétienne sur la côte de Syrie du Nord
Abstract (summary)
This dissertation reports on the results of the clearing and partial excavation of an early Christian church at Ras el Bassit, on the North Syrian coast.
The church is built on a synagogue attested by two inscriptions and by the menorah of an early sixth-century floor mosaic; it is part of a complex comprising rooms and spaces gathered behind an enclosure wall. A narthex opening on the nave through a colonnade forms with the side-aisles a turning collateral that was covered by a U-shaped gallery. The tripartite chevet is rectangular in plan; the rooms flanking the apse are symmetrical, opening both on the side-aisle through an arch and on the apse through a door. The sanctuary was first limited to the apse (2nd half of the 6th century?), and extended to the first bay (early 7th century); it had two successive champlevé décors. The South annex room was probably a martyrion, and a tomb to the South limit of the sanctuary attests of a martyrial focus on this side. The North annex room yielded a virtually complete table; its base-plate covered an unrobbed reliquary and shared with it a functional oil circulation system. The existence of a martyrial focus to the South is related to the Antiochean practice, but the synthronon in the apse, the narthex and the gallery are Apamean features that are rare or unknown in Antiochene. Foundation relics deposited under or within altars are unknown in North Syria, but the corpus is largely dominated by the village churches of the Limestone Hills; it thins out from the second half of the sixth century onwards, at a time when the practice of foundation relics spreads in other Levantine provinces.
The church was destroyed by an earthquake after 617. After a long period of abandon, a small chapel was built in the ruins of its apse and abandoned towards the mid-thirteenth century.
Indexing (details)
Religious congregations;
Religious history
0320: Religious history