The article was first published here.

Right in between the Ponda - Panaji Road and the Mandovi River in Old Goa, India lies a number of old churches, the most famous of which is the Basilica of Bom Jesus. But further down a country road to the west a dilapidated structure stands with its brick edifices prominent. From its lone standing bell tower and the architecture of the windows it does not take an expert to figure out the structure was once a church. Locally, it is known as the Church of Saint Augustine and records indicate that it might be older than the Basilica of Bom Jesus but it is overshadowed by the latter’s grandeur. The church was constructed between 1597 and 1602 by monks of the Order of Saint Augustine.

The Church of Saint Augustine stands as a haunting and majestic testament to the Portuguese colonial era and the religious fervour of the 16th and 17th centuries. Though now largely in ruins, this historic structure encapsulates the grandeur and ambition that characterised the spread of Christianity in India during the peak of Portuguese influence. The church included  a sprawling four-story structure that was among the most imposing in the region at the time. The church itself was built in the Baroque architectural style, reflecting the influence of European designs. It was dedicated to Saint Augustine, a key figure in Christian theology known for his influential works, such as Confessions and The City of God. The tower that still partially stands today was once part of a larger structure housing a massive bell. The main altar was dedicated to Saint Augustine, while several side altars were devoted to other saints and religious figures. This grandeur underscored the church's role as a centre for both religious worship and ecclesiastical power. Decline of the Church of Saint Augustine began in the mid-19th century. A series of unfortunate events, including the expulsion of religious orders by the Portuguese government in 1835 and subsequent neglect, contributed to the deterioration of the structure. Over time, the harsh Goan climate further accelerated the degradation. By the early 20th century, large sections of the church had collapsed, including its vaulted ceiling and main altar. Today, the most recognizable feature of the site is the 46-metre high bell-tower. This lone bell tower is an iconic image, standing amid the ruins as a solemn reminder of the past. Efforts to preserve what remains of the structure have been undertaken by the Archaeological Survey of India, which maintains the site as part of Goa's cultural heritage.

From the 1980s, search began in the Soviet Union and Georgia to trace the remains of a legendary Georgian queen from the medieval era who had chosen martyrdom to protect her faith and honour. For this act she was declared a saint of the Georgian church. Her name was Ketevan and to history she is better known as Ketevan the Martyr. Soon the search for her relics would lead the Soviets and the Georgians to this dilapidated church in Goa.

So, who was Ketevan the Martyr?

She was born to Prince Ashotan in the House of Mukhrani or Bagrationi dynasty. She married Prince David of the Kingdom of Kakheti who later became King David I. After the death of her husband she ruled as the Queen Regent of Kakheti from 1605 - 1614. 

After the death of David, his brother Constantine I conspired with the Iranian Safavid Empire in 1605 and killed his reigning father Alexander II and usurped the crown. Queen Ketevan rallied the support of the Kakhetian noble against Constantine I and defeated the forces loyal to Constantine in battle. 

Safavid chronicler Fazli Kuzani writes that even after victory, Queen Ketevan showed magnanimity towards the enemy, she ordered that wounded enemy soldiers to be treated with care and compassion. Muslim merchants who suffered in the war were compensated and set free. 

Shah Abbas I of Iran enjoyed suzerainty over Georgia. Therefore, Queen Ketevan tried negotiating with the Shah in order to confirm her underage son Teimuraz I while she ruled as the regent. However, Teimuraz was proving to be an unmanageable ruler, especially for the Shah who saw Kaheti as nothing more than a vassal state. Teimuraz’s warm relations with both Ottomans and the Russians, who were enemies of Iran, proved to be to big an annoyance for the Shah to ignore. Hence the queen went to Iran in 1614 to negotiate and prevent a bloodbath, to convince the Shah to show leniency towards her kingdom. 

She essentially served up herself as an honorary hostage to the Shah in order to prevent him from attacking Kakheti and securing the position of her son, the Shah kept the queen as a captive in Shiraz for several years. Ultimately, he ordered her to renounce Christianity. When she refused, she tortured her to death in 1624. 

Two Portuguese friars of the Order of Saint Augustine were present in Shiraz when she died and they saw her act as martyrdom. The Augustinian friars failed to convince her to become a Catholic, thus giving them more options to take her remains to a Catholic church in Western Europe rather than keep them at a Georgian church. But she died as a martyr of the Georgian denomination. It gave the Augustianian friars limited scope to house her remains as there were not many Georgian churches in Western Europe in that era. 

Since Kakheti was a vassal state of the Shah there were concerns that her remains might be defiled and church housing them might be destroyed if the Shah chooses to do so. The friars exhumed Ketevan’s body and took the remains to Georgia and housed them at the Alaverdi Cathedral in 1628. However, her remains were lost while moving them from Alaverdi to a safer location due to looting raids being conducted in the region. The horse carrying her remains fell into Aragvi river and the relics were washed away. 

Search for relics ensued in the Soviet Union and Georgia from the 1980s. Archaeologists from those countries fanned across Eurasia in the search for her remains. Some Portuguese documents from the 1620s recorded that after her death her right arm was taken by Portuguese friars to, what was then, the Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of India.  Her arm was to be interred at the newly constructed St. Augustines church in Goa. 

But the church was abandoned in 1835 after the Portuguese government in Goa drove out the Augustinian friars and many other religious orders under its new repressive religious policies. The neglect of the church caused it to collapse in 1842 except the bell-tower from where the bell was moved to a newer church in Panaji where it has remained ever since.  

In 1985, Armenian historian Roberto Gulbenkian published a book which brought together the fragmentary accounts of Queen Ketevan and her relics. For the next two decades many Georgian delegations had visited the church in the hopes of locating her remains. Georgian archaeologists along with experts from Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) conducted unsuccessful excavations within the church complex. 

The unsuccessful excavations followed clues from a single source that was collated in 1958. The source mentioned that Ketevan’s bones were kept in a black box which was installed on the second window on the epistle side of the chapel. The Georgian excavators had taken apart the main chapel but were unable to find any such box. 

However while clearing the rubble from the excavations in 2004, ASI came across a basalt tombstone of Manuel de Siqueira. The church’s chronicles narrated that Manuel de Siqueira’s tombstone contained the black box containing the relics of Queen Ketevan. But when they looked under it, there was no black box containing relics. The excavators were obviously disappointed.

When excavations resumed in 2005, they found few bones at the site. The ASI excavation team was excited with this discovery but they needed to confirm that the bones belonged to Queen Ketevan. ASI got in touch with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad. CCMB had just started the first ancient DNA sampling facility in India, so they agreed to take on the job. The team at CCMB started processing DNA from the bones in 2006 and after three years of rigorous trial they could not successfully obtain viable DNA from the bone for analysis.

The CCMB attempted a second time with the extraction of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the bones and tried to place the genetic markers in a haplogroup. A haplogroup is a genetic marker identifying new branches of descendents from the subject’s mtDNA. Identifying haplogroups from a person’s mtDNA helps geneticists place that person’s origin geographically. 

After coming to know of the developments back in India, the St. Ketevan Church in Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia) shipped saliva samples from thirty Georgians to India. This was for the first time a transnational relationship was being forged between a religious organisation and a scientific institute. 

Dr. Niraj Rai, a scientist specialising in archaeogenetics and associated with the CCMB began to profile the mtDNA of the bones. Two of the bones belonged to the local priests who lived there at the time but the bones from the hand did not match with the Indian DNA database at all. The profiling revealed that the DNA belonged to a woman of Georgian descent. 

The team tried to publish the results in a scientific journal but the editorial board and peer review wanted the profiling done at a different lab in India. However, there is no other lab in India doing similar kind of DNA profiling work. But the journal did not publish the paper as it was against their policies. Hence the team contacted a different journal named Mitochondrion to publish the result. The peer review board of Mitochondrion agreed with the CCMB team’s reasoning and published their paper titled ‘Relic excavated in western India is probably of Georgian Queen Ketevan’. The “probably” in the title of the paper was the best and nearest confirmation the team was going to get in the absence of a secondary confirmation from another lab in India. But it was the first time in India ancient DNA results were reported in a scientific way. The team’s work was done. They carried their duties entrusted to them to the nearest conclusion that was possible in the limited resources they had and it was the presence of secondary sources of historical literary documents and archaeological excavations that put all the pieces of the puzzle in their neat places to complete the picture.

Queen Ketevan found rest, which eluded her in lifetime, after her death and martyrdom in a foreign land which was unaware of her identity till the late 20th century. 

But pleasant surprises awaited her. She would ultimately return to her homeland of Georgia permanently. After repeated requests from the Georgian government, India decided to permanently hand over parts of  the relics to Georgia in 2021. At an emotional reunion after nearly 400 years, her relics were received by the Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili as Indian Minister for External Affairs, S. Jaishankar at a ceremony in Tbilisi. 

Hopefully, she rests now, at peace with her history, spanning three nations in two continents.