The Resurrection is known in Russian as Bogoyavlenie i voskresinie, in Greek as ANASTASIS and in Old English as the Harrowing of Hell. This is the Orthodox Church’s greatest feast, celebrating Easter, and showing Christ Descending into Hell, whose broken gates form a cross under his feet, and rescuing Adam and Eve from tombs together with kings David and Solomon (identifiable by their crowns), St John the Baptist and other Old Testament figures. All of this representing the general resurrection of humanity.

The event itself, scarcely referred to in the New Testament, is based on the apocryphal, and today little known, Book of Nicodemus. This was long thought to date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries but recent scholarship suggests a later date. i.e. 8th century. (see A. Kartsonis Anastasis, the Making of an Image, Princeton, 1986)