Georgian Graffito from Nessana, Dating to the ‘Dark Age’ of Christianity in Palestine

This report is dedicated to an ancient Georgian graffito from Nessana in the Negev, an important pilgrimage hub of the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods. The graffito was discovered and documented by the inspector of the British Mandatory Department of Antiquities, P.L.O. Guy and was later lost. The only documentation for this graffito was found in the archival materials of the Department and was never published. The inscription is palaeographically dated to a relatively late period, the ninth–tenth centuries CE, and together with other recently discovered epigraphic finds from the region, testifies to the continuation of the Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Sinai well into the early Middle Ages.