Archaeologists excavating a medieval church complex in the village of Ankhua, in Abkhazia’s Gudauta District in northwestern Georgia, have recovered a missing stone fragment that, together with Greek inscriptions found on related artifacts, helps identify three brothers who commissioned an 11th-century cross.
Archimandrite Dorofey Dbar, who led the excavation at the Bzhliua temple complex, announced the find. The fragment is the lower section of a limestone pedestal that once held a cross before the altar. Two other sections, previously dated to the 11th century, have long been housed at the Abkhazian State Museum.
The piece preserves two surfaces. Above the original floor level, its front face carries a Byzantine-style carved cross with faint traces of color and decorative patterns on the surrounding sides. Below floor level, on a section not accessible to visitors, researchers found marking lines, a small trial ornament, and what may be a short prayer left by the craftsman, although this has not been confirmed.
Greek inscriptions at medieval church identify three brothers
Locating the third piece confirms the cross originally stood in the church at Bzhliua and provides researchers with a complete pedestal for the first time, allowing full reconstruction of its shape, size, and decor. Expedition member Oleg Papaskiri matched the fragments using photographs taken over several years, Dbar said.
An inscription on the section now held by the museum, written in the Georgian script known as Asomtavruli, was translated by Leo Shervashidze. It records that a man named Georgi, son of Basil, erected the cross in God’s name and asked those who prayed there to remember him and his two brothers. Other inscriptions identify the brothers as Theodore and Cyril.
Greek inscriptions found on separate objects depicting Saint Theodore, known in Abkhaz tradition as Aytar, suggest that the saint was Theodore’s namesake and was venerated at the medieval church. Additional inscriptions point to Saint George, Saint Basil the Great, and Saint Cyril of Alexandria as the patrons of the other brothers.
Researchers believe the brothers belonged to a local Abkhaz noble family that adopted Greek names at a time when Ankhua served as a residential area near Anakopia, the medieval capital of the Abkhaz kingdom, now known as the town of New Athos.
Chapel’s layout and looted tombs point to a family burial site
The fragment’s location, near a corner where the chapel’s outer entrance meets a raised eastern section, prompted researchers to revise earlier assumptions that the cross once stood in the church’s central nave. It may instead have belonged to a chapel added or reworked later. Looted tombs nearby, damaged before the excavation began, may hold the remains of the same family, although researchers called that conclusion preliminary.
The cross’s shape matches one at the Church of Saint Theodore at the medieval Anakopia Fortress near present-day New Athos in Abkhazia, supporting a cultural and chronological link between the two sites.
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