Crypt from Chkhuteli

The paper studies the remains of a building discovered under the floor of the St. Maximus the Confessor Church in the village of Chkhuteli, Tsageri Municipality. Its form represents an underground storage room, a hiding place, a gallery, and a crypt, which were used for the burial of a saint and for church services. Many similar crypts have been discovered by archaeologies under the floor of early medieval Georgian Christian churches (Daviti,  Nekrisi and so on). The newly discovered crypt and the human fingerprints found on it, re­fe­re­n­ces to Greek and Georgian written sources from the 7th-4th, 11th-12th centuries, as well as other circumstances, give us reason to believe that we are dealing with the tomb of Saint Maximus the Confessor.