What could be the world’s oldest nativity scene was found sketched into the ceiling of a small cavity in the Egyptian Sahara desert and is believed to be at least 5,000 years old.

Seeker.com is reporting on the astonishing find of a scene which was discovered on the ceiling of a cave during an expedition by Italian researchers to sites between the Nile valley and the Gilf Kebir Plateau.

The scene is painted on rock in a reddish-brown color and depicts a newborn between two parents, with animals on either side and a star overhead.

“It’s a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity. But it predates it by some 3,000 years,” geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, Italy, told Seeker.

Even though Morelli found the cave drawing in 2005, his team has decided now was the time to reveal the find.

“The discovery has several implications as it raises new questions on the iconography of one of the more powerful Christian symbols,” Morelli continued.

“It could have been interpreted as a normal depiction of a family, with the baby between the parents, but other details make this drawing unique,” Morelli said.

First, the newborn is drawn slightly above the parents, as if rising into the sky, would could have symbolized a pregnancy or impending birth.

“As death was associated to Earth in contemporary rock art from the same area, it is likely that birth was linked to the sky,” Morelli explained.

Two other figures make the scene even more curious. A headless lion, which appears in several rock drawings from the same area, is depicted in the scene as well as what appears to be a baboon or monkey. Above the scene appears to be a star.

Researchers have dubbed the site the “Cave of the Parents.”

“No doubt it’s an intriguing drawing,” Morelli said. “We didn’t find similar scenes until the early Christian age.”

Only God knows what was the intent of the artist who depicted the scene thousands of years before the birth of the Savior, or why He arranged for this particular Christmas to be the time of its revelation.

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