MARAAT AL-NUMAN, Syria — A contractor digging into the earth where the rubble of a destroyed house had been cleared away in northern Syria stumbled across a surprise: the remains of an underground Byzantine tomb complex believed to be more than 1,500 years old.
The discovery emerged last month in the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province, which is strategically located on the route between the cities of Aleppo and Damascus. The community became a touchpoint in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war that ended with the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a lightning rebel offensive in December.
Assad's forces seized the area back from opposition control in 2020. Houses were looted and demolished. Aerial images of the area show many houses still standing but without roofs.
Now residents are beginning to return and rebuild. In the course of a reconstruction project, stone openings were uncovered indicating the presence of ancient graves. Residents notified the directorate of antiquities, which dispatched a specialized team to inspect and secure the site.
Aboveground, it's a residential neighborhood with rows of cinder-block buildings, many of them damaged in the war. Next to one of those buildings, a pit leads down to the openings of two burial chambers, each containing six stone tombs. The sign of the cross is etched into the top of one stone column.
''Based on the presence of the cross and the pottery and glass pieces that were found, this tomb dates back to the Byzantine era,'' said Hassan al-Ismail, director of antiquities in Idlib. He noted that the discovery adds to an already rich collection of archeological sites in the area.
Idlib "has a third of the monuments of Syria, containing 800 archaeological sites in addition to an ancient city,'' al-Ismail said.
The Byzantine Empire, which began in the 4th century AD, was a continuation of the Roman empire with its capital in Constantinople — today's Istanbul — and Christianity as its official religion.
