Sunday, November 26, 2017

Even More on St Ketevan

Following on from my post "More on St Ketevan" in 2013, come this articles from the The Hindu:
The first ancient DNA study in South Asia has revealed that a 400-year-old bone relic kept in St. Augustinian Church in Goa is likely to be a remnant of Queen Ketevan of Georgia (eastern Europe), who was born in a royal family in 1565 in the medieval period.

A team of investigators from the CSIR, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), the Archaeological Survey of India and the Estonian BioCentre led by K. Thangaraj, CCMB, traced that the relic excavated from St. Augustinian Church complex in Goa, might belong to Georgian Queen Ketevan. The study has been published online recently in Mitochondrion journal.

For about a decade (1614 to 1624), the Queen remained in Shiraz as the prisoner of Shah Abbasi I. In 1624, the Persian emperor attempted to convert the Queen to Islamic faith. For resisting his wishes, she was tortured and strangled to death on September, 22, 1624.

From the Times of India (2017)
People in Georgia are greatly anticipating the arrival of the sacred relics, more than four centuries after these were brought to Old Goa by Augustinian Friars.

From The Quint:
Twenty-six years ago, the Government of India and Georgia, along with a posse of historians, archaeologists and priests, came together to recover a fragment of history lost in time – the mortal remains of a Georgian queen, believed to be in an old church in Goa.

The Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) Hyderabad Circle, after two decades of research and tests, has now concluded that the remains of Georgian Queen Ketevan were indeed at the St Augustine Church in Goa, bringing to light the 17th century connection between Georgia and the coastal state.

read more here 
@ Women of History - Mystery of Saint Ketevan
@ Women of History - Saint Ketevan

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