Ikea-style flat-pack church that sunk in a shipwreck around 500 AD to be revived

Byzantine Emperor Justinian wanted to ensure the domination of the new religion of Christianity so much that he shipped disassembled marble church parts around the empire to have them built in various locales. One of these churches, which has been likened to Ikea-style flat-pack furniture, was raised from the sea floor off the coast of Sicily and will be reconstructed at Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, in the first ever project of its kind.

The museum is preparing an exhibition it calls Storms, War and Shipwrecks for June 2016 that will include the figureheads and battering rams from prows of Roman warships. Scuba diving in the past 60 years has made possible salvaging operations that have brought up treasures from the world’s seas and harbors, says the BBC in an article about the Ashmolean’s exhibition.

The exhibition will also honor the work of Honor Frost, one of the first underwater archaeologists. He lived from 1917 to 2010.