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Adjacent
to the Jordan River itself the archaeologists
excavated a 6th- 7th Century Byzantine church
complex with at least four churches, including
remains of foundations and walls, mosaic floors,
fine coloured stone pavements, Corinthian capitals,
and column drums and bases. This is identified as
the church that ancient pilgrims said had been
built by the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius (491-518
AD) to commemorate the baptism of Jesus, in
particular the place where Jesus had left his
clothes on the riverbank. The firm identification
relies on the Byzantine texts' description of a
church peculiarly built
on raised stone arches, in order to withstand
the seasonal flooding of the Jordan River. The remains
of those massive stone
arches are still on the ground today, where
they were first erected and then collapsed in
the 6th or 7th Century AD. The
church had a marble column with an iron
cross marking the spot where people thought Jesus was baptized. This
river- side site also has Islamic era
pottery and architecture from the 8th - 9th Centuries AD,
reflecting the continued use of the
pilgrim's route and river crossing in early
Islamic centuries. 
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