Queen’s relics sent to Georgia

Bhopal: September 22 is a red-letter day for Georgians. Relics of 17th century Georgian queen Ketevan, posthumously canonised for preferring a horrible death to giving up Christianity, made a journey from India home on the day to her former kingdom of Kakheti in eastern Georgia, known world over for its wine.

The queen’s mortal remains lay buried for four centuries in an abandoned church in Goa before being recovered and sent back to her country. It was also an emotional moment for Nizammudin Taher, Nagpur circle Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) superintendent, whose decade-long search for the sacred relic led to the recovery.

“This was first of its kind archaeological discovery in India involving archaeologists, historians, priests and genomics researchers,” Mr Taher told this newspaper as tears welled up in his eyes. His narrative of his discovery sounded more thrilling than the Hollywood blockbuster National Treasure series.

“One clue led us to another, then another…till we stumbled upon the relic in 2004,” said Mr Taher who was then serving as ASI superintendent of Goa circle. Mr Taher is going to be honoured with honorary doctorate by Caucasus International University of Georgia on October 10 this year for his discovery.

Four ASI teams and scores of archaeologists, historians and researchers from Georgia, which disintegrated from the USSR to become an independent nation in 1980s, joined the task. Georgia had sought India’s assistance to locate the Goan relic of queen Ketevan after a book authored by historian Roberto Gulbenkian on the queen was released in 1985.

Picture of Georgian queen Ketevan.

Several historical documents relating to the venerated queen Ketevan also mentioned that she was buried in a chapel in Goa in 17th century. “Ketevan the Martyr”, as she is popularly known by her countrymen, was the queen of Kakheti during the 1600s when her kingdom was invaded by Persian ruler Shah Abbas 1.

She, in her 60s then, had been held hostage in Shiraz in then Persia for a decade till 1624. The Persian ruler offered her a proposition — to convert to Islam and join his harem. A devout follower of Georgian Orthodox Church, Ketevan chose to embrace death instead.

A Portuguese friar St Augustine, was in Shiraz at that time and he  exhumed queen Ketevan’s body. Contemporary accounts hinted that her right arm had been taken to Goa in 1627 by Portuguese friars to be interred in the St Augustine complex on old Goa. In 1628, some of her remains were taken to Georgia.

Since then, many excavations had been done by the Georgian archaeologists in the St Augustine complex to retrieve the relic but in vain. The Georgian teams were of the firm belief that the bones of Ketevan, kept in a black box, had been “preserved” under the main chapel. But the excavations in the area yielded no results, said Mr Taher.

“It was an accidental discovery by my team. We stumbled upon a basalt tombstone, while clearing the rubble. It had the name Manuel de Siqueira engraved on it,” he said. A fellowship Portuguese student deciphered the labyrinthine clues which indicated location of the black bone in a place called Chapter chapel.

“Later, a bone in two pieces was retrieved from the excavation site. But, there was no trace of the box,” he said. He decided to go for genetic analysis of the finding to establish that the relic belonged to the queen. The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCBM), Hyderabad, had for the first time conducted DNA tests of a relic. 

The second DNA test of the relic done in 2013, confirmed the remains were of Ketevan. It was a monumental discovery for the ASI and for Georgia too, Mr Taher observed. There is a belief among the people of Georgia that their country would be freed of a curse once the mortal remains of Ketevan return to their land.

The relic will move to Georgia for six months before being restored to the open air museum established in the restored St Augustine complex in Goa, said Mr Taher.