Watch the video: 1800-year-old chamber discovered under the cathedral – find confirms old legend.
Mysterious find in Great Britain: Archaeologists have discovered an 1800-year-old chamber under Leicester Cathedral. In the room from the 2nd century, researchers found a sandstone altar lying upside down in the rubble floor. The researchers suspect that the chamber was buried in the 3rd or 4th century. According to an old legend, a place of worship and sacrifice existed long before the church was built. The researchers assume that the four by four meter room provides evidence for “It could have been a room associated with the worship of one or more gods – our finds during the excavation suggest – the underground structures with painted walls and the altar that we found – close,” says ULAS Prospector Matthew Morris. Subterranean chambers like these are often associated with fertility rites and the worship of mythological gods like Mithras, Cybele or Bacchus, he says. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, Britannia – as part of what is now Great Britain was then called – was under Roman administration. During this period, Hadrian’s Wall was built to separate and protect the Roman Empire from the tribes to the north. In Roman Britain, deities such as Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were worshiped. At the same time, the Romans tolerated the worship of local Celtic gods, provided the residents showed loyalty to the official religion. It is unclear which cult the chamber possibly served, since the pictures on the walls have not survived. The first evidence that a church was built on the site dates from 1068 – more than 800 years after the emergence of the possible sanctuary