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The Church of the Nativity — aWorld Heritage sitebelieved to house the cradle ofJesusin the West Bank metropolis of Bethlehem — is apparently so holy that there are baptismal fonts coming out of the baptismal face .

In a news group discussion earlier this week , Ziad al - Bandak , foreland of the committee task with restoring the far-famed church , annunciate that archaeologists had discovered a baptismal font ( a basin of water used for baptisms ) date to the sixth or seventh 100 A.D. hidden inside another , older baptismal font , thePalestinian news site Wafa.pn reported .

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Ziad al-Bandak, head of the Restoration Commission for the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank, reveals an ancient baptismal font discovered inside another, newer font. The newfound font is estimated to date from 501 to 600 A.D.

According to al - Bandak , the newly discovered font seems to be made of the same form of stone as the church service ’s column , meaning it could be well-nigh as old as the church building itself , which see to the 4th century A.D.

Few other item about the physical object are uncommitted at this time , but al - Bandak take down that experts from the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and abroad have been invited to take the face and get a better sense of the church ’s account . [ In Photos : The place of origin of Jesus ]

The Church of the Nativity has been under renovation since 2013 , and the labor has already turned up some surprisal treasures , including a gorgeousByzantineangel mosaic uncovered byItalian researchers in 2016 .

Photograph looking down a short set of marble stairs into a narrow, empty pool with an apsidal end

in the beginning commissioned around the year A.D. 326 , the church stick out atop a grotto that has been considered the traditionalbirthplace of Jesussince the second one C A.D. The church remains open during the renovations , and continues to attract Pilgrim and tourists from around the macrocosm .

Originally published onLive Science .

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