Loaves of bread from the 7th-8th centuries stamped with Christian imagery have been discovered at the ancient site of Eirenopolis, modern-day Topraktepe, Turkey. They are among the best-preserved archaeological examples of bread ever found in Anatolia.
The five loaves were found carbonized, which preserved them in such condition the iconography stamped on them is still clearly legible. The most elaborately decorated loaf is stamped with the image of Christ as the sower who plants wheat for harvest. An inscription in Greek around the border translates to “With gratitude to Blessed Jesus,” a reference to John 6:35: And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
The other four are all stamped with Maltese crosses. They are circular, and the stamped markings indicate they were prosphora, simple, small loaves of leavened bread Greek Orthodox Eucharistic rituals, either as the bread consecrated as the literal Body of Christ shared during Communion, or as the antidoron, blessed bread distributed after the service. Imprinted bread is still used today as the prosphora and antidoron.
The Topraktepe discovery transcends the value of the individual artifact and extends to the historical understanding of the Ermenek region during Late Antiquity and the early medieval period. The presence of a production center for ritual objects of this quality and with such specific iconography suggests the existence in Irenopolis of an active Christian community, endowed with resources and a distinct theological identity expressed through these representations that diverged from imperial canons.
The loaves will undergo archaeobotanical studies to determine the exact composition of the grains used in their preparation, as well as microscopy and tomography techniques to better understand the manufacturing and carbonization processes. Each of these data points will help reconstruct more precisely the ritual, daily life, agriculture, and beliefs of a community that, more than thirteen hundred years ago, baked its faith into bread—and that, by a quirk of archaeological preservation, has reached us today to tell its story.
It must be said that from a Frankish point of view, there is –of course– exactly one(!) ‘orthodox’ leavening agent for bread: Sourdough 😇️
Of course, ‘Eirene’ is the Greek word for peace. ‘Eirenopolis’, therefore, is the ‘City of Peace’, in our case presumably the one in Cilicia (‘Irenopolis in Cilicia’).
Eucharist/ εὐχαριστία/ Thanksgiving is using communion bread, and notably not only the Eastern Orthodox Church is indeed using leavened bread for that purpose.
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PS: We probably would have been even more so ‘thankful’, if the pictured loaf had been enlightened properly, i.e. in order to read the full inscription in Greek:
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? Eucharist? to? (h)agio(?) Christ(?)
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OK, I will probably never decipher the Greek text on that bread.
However, I found a description in Medieval Bavarian by Johann Schiltberger, who had been taken prisoner as a youngster in the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396AD, and apparently the Greeks are still using ‘Prosphorai’.
According to Schiltberger, who correctly talks of ‘Prosphora’ and ‘Artoklasia’, the breaking of the other bread,…
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“…The Greeks do not believe in the Holy Trinty, and not in the Holiness of the Church of Rome or the Pope, and they even claim that their Patriarch is more powerful than the Pope. The sacrament they perform with bread and they use it with wine and warm water. As the priest gives the sacrament, they throw themselves down on their faces, as nobody is said to be worthy to see God directly in the eye.
Moreover, as the priest is celebrating Mass, he takes the rest of the bread, from which he has taken the sacrament, and he cuts it down to smaller pieces into a pot, and as all the men and the women sit down, the priest with an assistant brings it in front, and each one takes one of those pieces and bite in it in the middle, and they refer to that bread as ‘Prosphora’…”
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Originally, ‘prosphora’ meant any offering made to a temple, but in Orthodoxy, as well as Byzantine Rite and Catholicism it has come to mean specifically the bread offered at the Eucharist during Divine Liturgy.
“A prosphora (or prosphoron) is a stamped bread from only four ingredients, wheat flour (white), yeast, salt, and water. Salt was not used in earlier times”, and much to my confusion, no sourdough at all.
Note that there are –remarkably similar– pictures of modern ‘prosphorai’ 😀
I wonder what happened in the City of Peace that caused the baker to abruptly leave his ovens and let the bread char.
The Muslims were attacking communities routinely, killing Christians and robbing them of their property, and forcing conversions on the survivors.
What is the historical record for this town, if it has survived?