Archaeologists found the house where Jesus held the Last Supper: the building still stands on Mount Sinai

One of the most iconic stories in the Bible is the Last Supper of Jesus and his apostles. Scientists have managed to find the room where Christ's last meal took place 2,000 years ago.

Archaeologists believe that Jesus' last meal before his crucifixion took place in Jerusalem, in a house on Mount Sinai. Interestingly, the building is still standing there, writes DailyMail.

Researchers believe that the Last Supper took place in the upper room of a two-story house with limestone walls and a red, sloping roof that still stands.

This location has been documented in several works of art dating back to the fourth century AD. This is the time when Christians first began visiting the room to honor Christ's last moments of freedom before his crucifixion.

The Upper Room, also known as the Cenacle, is briefly described in Luke 22:11-13. Jesus asked for a large furnished upper room where he and his disciples could eat the Passover meal.

The Cenacle still stands in the old city of Jerusalem on Mount Zion, which is located above the south gate. The building was constructed with large branching columns that supported a vaulted ceiling and a sloping red roof.

In 1884, Greek Orthodox Christians discovered the oldest map of Jerusalem while building a new church in Madaba, Jordan. The map was created in 560 AD as a depiction of the Holy Land, showing the Cardo Maximus (main street) stretching down the middle and two sacred structures at the southern end (lower right side), identified by their red roofs.

But it wasn't until 2017 that David Christian Clausen, an adjunct professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, noticed something unusual: there was a building with a red sloping roof like the Shrine, and it was in the same location.

This led researchers to suspect that the upper room was the site of the Last Supper. But they still needed additional evidence, which came in the form of a sixth-century drawing discovered in Italy in 1846. The drawing shows Jesus riding through the southern gate of the city on a donkey, with the Cenacle in the background.

Another depiction of this scene was discovered in 1585 AD in a fourth-century sculpture. Here, Jesus stands before Mary Magdalene after he has risen from the dead. And right behind the place where he stood was a building with a sloping roof.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) decided to test this theory in 2019, using laser technology and modern photographic imaging to remove all the updates made to the Cenacle over the years.

"I felt like I was in Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code. We had to decipher the ancient symbols," said Amit Reem, IAA Jerusalem District Archaeologist.

The researchers mapped every corner of the room to "create accurate models of the space" that revealed interesting features of the Cenacle. The resulting images showed the symbols of the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah on the ceiling.

"From time to time, when we have the opportunity, we continue to document other parts of the sacred complex. I hope that perhaps in the future we will have the opportunity to conduct small classical archaeological studies," Amit Reem expressed hope.

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