The chalice, made of gold and onyx and sprinkled with precious stones, is actually two goblets fused together, one turned up, the other down.
The goblet has been in the basilica’s possession since the 11th century and in plain sight in the church’s basement museum since the 1950s. The emir then gifted the chalice as a peace offering to the Christian King Ferdinand. The researchers had been investigating Islamic remains in the Basilica of San Isidoro when they came across medieval Egyptian parchments that mentioned that the holy chalice had been taken from Jerusalem to Cairo and then given to an emir who ruled an Islamic kingdom on Spain’s Mediterranean coast in return for the help he gave to famine-stricken Egypt.
