What is the earliest depiction of Jesus Christ?
The earliest depiction of Jesus Christ, as broadly agreed by historical consensus, shows the Christian faith’s messiah in a less-than-flattering light.
In the century or so that passed since Jesus’ crucifixion, followers of the Nazareth carpenter’s message were viewed by the Roman authorities as little more than a fringe offshoot of the Jewish community, a cultish faction obsessed with apocalyptic eschatology.
Yet, slowly accruing converted Gentiles and spreading across much of the Roman territories, the ruling imperial powers began casting a watchful eye on the emerging sect, the nascent Christians condemning candidly the Roman state’s pagan religion and worship of perceived idolatry. Considered treason, the following centuries would see fluctuations of Christian persecution, including executions and bloody Colosseum spectacles, until Emperor Constantine’s formal establishment of Christianity as Rome’s official religion in 323 AD.
It’s during these years of social and religious upheaval that the generally agreed-upon earliest attempt to pictorialise Jesus that exists today was first scrawled. First discovered in 1857 when a building known as Domus Gelotiana was excavated on the Palatine Hill ancient site, Caligula’s former property contained a piece of graffiti scratched in the plaster walls, having been sealed for centuries due to the building being used as a foundation for extensions above.
Known as the ‘Alexamenos graffito’, the image shows a human-like figure crucified to a cross with the head of a donkey or mule. Above shines either a Greek upsilon or tau cross, and to the left, what’s presumed to be a Roman guard holding their hand out in worship. Scrawled across in some misspelt ancient Greek is the caption “ΑλΕξΑΜΕΝΟϹ ϹεΒΕΤΕ θΕΩΝ”, roughly translating as ”Alexamenos worshipping a God”.
Dated to around the year 200 AD, the ‘Alexamenos graffito’ not only stands as the likely oldest artistic impression of Christ, but also his mockery. A symbol of insult in antiquity, the donkey’s head would have been intended as an offensive gesture, ridiculing those among the Roman citizenry and Praetorian guard who had begun worshipping the new religion.
There was further scoffing confusion from Roman society. Firstly, the Christian faithful were parading the cross as their holy insignia, a degrading and lowly method of execution reserved for only the most loathsome and dangerous criminals in the eyes of the law. Second, the image reveals an anxiety regarding the private convictions of those working in the residences of Rome’s royalty and civic society, a paranoia among the elite, or even their staff, materialising in a cruel ‘outing’ of whatever heresy Alexamenos was deemed to have committed.
Or perhaps just a bit of fun? We’ll never know. Now exhibited in the Palatine Museum and its original lines and scrawls weathered by time, the ‘Alexamenos graffito’ stands as a fascinating historical document, offering a window into an ancient world where the Western world’s seismic foundations were still taking embryonic shape, and antiquity’s relics and artifacts made ever less remote by humanity’s age-old capacity for prejudice, disgruntled pettiness, or the universal impulse to simply crack a joke at one’s expense shining through the unknown artist’s scribbled lambast.
