Grail?

In a vault of the Chatham Phenix National Bank & Trust Co. on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, lies a silver cup of great antiquity. It is believed by many to be the Holy Grail which according to legend vanished mysteriously after Sir Galahad took it to the city of Sarras in the East. The cup is known as the Great Chalice of Antioch, where it was discovered in 1910 by some excavating Arabs. It has been since 1914 the property of Fahim Joseph Kouchakji. a Syrian Catholic born in Aleppo who became a U. S. citizen last week. Art Collector Kouchakji was planning last week to sail for France with the Chalice, to show it in an exhibition of Christian art at the Louvre next month. This will be the first time it will have been exhibited publicly, although archaeological experts and other accredited persons have always been allowed to examine it.

The actual, original cup is a common silver vessel of poor and crude workmanship. The rim is broken in places, as if fragments had been removed as keepsakes. It is contained in an outer shell, whose workmanship establishes the antiquity of the Chalice and is the basis of the theory that the cup used by Christ and his disciples at the Last Supper was preserved and, perhaps several years after the Supper, fittingly decorated. The outer shell is a sheathing of elaborately sculptured silver, its gilded decorations carved in an openwork known in ancient times as opus interrasile, one of the most beautiful and expensive kinds of workmanship then practiced in the Near East. The decorations are a continuous network of leaves, stems, branches, birds and human figures, from which the background has been cut away, so that the inner bowl is visible. The most striking part of all this elaborate carving are the twelve seated figures. These are identified as Jesus-- once as a boy and once as an adult--and some of the disciples: Jude and James, Peter, Paul, Mark, Matthew, John and James the Greater. Dr. Eisen regards the figures as actual portraits. It is noteworthy that Christ is beardless.

The theory of the cup as the Grail is further suggested by such symbols as vines, the Star of Bethlehem, the plate of loaves and fish. There is much evidence to show that the Chalice could not date later than the ist Century. That date has been challenged by some experts, including Professor Charles Rufus Morey of Princeton, but is supported by Professors Arthur Bernard Cook of Cambridge and Josef Strzygowski of Vienna. If they are correct, then Kouchakji's Chalice may indeed be Galahad's Grail, the true cup of Jesus. For history records no other important Christian cup in the century of the Lord.

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