Stunning 2000-year-old engraving sheds new light on day of Jesus' crucifixion

The name of the man who helped Jesus carry the cross may have survived for 2,000 years, carved into an ancient burial chest.The limestone chest, known as an ossuary used to hold human bones, bears the inscription 'Alexander, son of Simon,' matching the father-and-son pairing recorded in the Gospel of Mark.New Testament scholar Dr Jeremiah Johnston told the Daily Mail: 'So we have a Simon, a son named Alexander, and a Cyrenian family, buried in Jerusalem in the right period, before 70 AD. 'Is it the same family? I think it is very plausible, if not likely.'A further clue appears on the lid, a Hebrew marking interpreted as a reference to Cyrene, the same North African city associated with Simon in the Bible.Mark describes Simon as a passerby coming in from the countryside when soldiers forced him to help Jesus carry the cross through Jerusalem.'The convergence of the name, the son, the Cyrenian origin, and the date is striking,' said Johnston.'In my judgment it tips toward a real connection.' The limestone chest, known as an ossuary used to hold human bones, bears the inscription 'Alexander, son of Simon,' matching the father-and-son pairing recorded in the Gospel of MarkWhile many biblical scholars believe the ossuary likely bears the name of the biblical character, Johnston told the Daily Mail that caution is warranted.'Simon was the most common Jewish name of the time, and Alexander was popular too,' he said.The chest was uncovered in a Jerusalem tomb in 1941. A total of 11 ossuaries were found inside.Johnston, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Jesus Discoveries, further explained that the tomb where the ossuary was found lacked a bone box dedicated to Alexander's brother, Rufus.In the Bible, Mark 15:21 states: 'A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.' With the missing ossuaries, Johnston said: 'So we cannot call it proven with certainty, but high probability.'He added: 'What is not in doubt is what Mark is doing. He names Simon's sons because his first readers knew them. 'He is pointing to living witnesses who could confirm the story. Ancient legends don't work that way. Eyewitness history does. And this ossuary shows that Mark's details fit real people in real Jerusalem.' Some biblical scholars believe the box may have held the remains of the son of Simon, the man mentioned in the Bible as helping Jesus carry the cross before the crucifixionThe chest carries three separate inscriptions on its front, back and lid, with Alexander and Simon’s names appearing more than once.Writing about the artifact in 2003, Biblical Archaeology Review contributor Tom Powers described an apparent engraving mistake: the writer began adding Alexander’s name beside Simon’s before starting again on the lines below.The lid contains lettering in both Greek and Hebrew. The Greek inscription translates as ‘of Alexander,’ while 'QRNYT' alongside his name has been interpreted as a reference to Cyrene.That reading remains uncertain, but Powers suggested that the engraver may have made a one-letter error when writing the Hebrew word for ‘Cyrenian.’Powers reported that Israeli historian Tal Ilan, an expert on ancient Jewish names, considered it ‘very likely’ that the chest belonged to the Alexander mentioned in Mark’s Gospel.For Powers, the names, family relationship, apparent North African origins and first-century Jerusalem setting create a compelling parallel with Mark’s account. They do not, however, establish that the chest belonged to the biblical family.Powers raised an even more intriguing possibility: the chest may once have held the remains of both Alexander and his father, Simon.In a follow-up analysis published in 2006, he argued that differences in the lettering could reveal how the chest was reused and its inscriptions added over time.One clue is the name Simon, carved near the upper center of the chest’s back in noticeably deeper lines than the surrounding lettering.The inscription identifying Alexander as Simon’s son appears below it in much shallower strokes. Powers interpreted this as evidence that Simon’s name was carved first and Alexander’s added later.Another clue appears on the opposite side, where the two names were written on separate lines in green chalk or a similar substance.Powers argued that the Greek wording there could be read as a list of two individuals whose remains shared the chest. Burial boxes containing more than one person are known from the period.Under his proposed sequence, Simon’s bones were placed inside first. Alexander’s remains were added later, prompting someone to expand the inscription.When the chest was repositioned within the family tomb, Powers suggested, its exposed side received the chalk label identifying both men.The theory remains disputed, as many scholars rejected an earlier suggestion of a shared burial, arguing that the inscriptions identified only one buried person - Alexander.Powers also noted that the excavation report did not document bones recovered from inside the chests or establish whether any analysis had determined how many individuals they contained.Other evidence helps place the burial in the period described by Johnston, no more than 40 years after Jesus' death.Pottery found in the tomb, including a distinctive Herodian oil lamp, supported dating its final use to the first century AD, before Jerusalem fell to the Romans in AD 70.