Archaeologists presented an ancient church they have discovered outside Jerusalem that may contain the burial place of the biblical prophet Zechariah.

The Byzantine church in the Judaean hills has an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor depicting lions, foxes, fish and peacocks. It will be visible only for another week before it is covered again with soil for its own protection, said the dig's leader, Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The hill-top church was destroyed by an earthquake some 1,300 years ago and lay partly buried until detectives from the authority, pursuing a gang of antiquity thieves, noticed an elaborate doorpost poking through the earth. The robbers got away - they were caught a few months later at a site nearby - but archaeologists began digging at the site, known as Hirbet Madras, in December and eventually uncovered the remains of the church.

It was about the size of a basketball court and contained fallen marble pillars and the nearly pristine 10-metre-long mosaic.

Beneath the church's altar is a burial chamber that the Antiquities Authority said may have been the tomb of the prophet Zechariah, known from the eponymous book in the Bible, written around 520 BC, which tells of the Jews return from exile in Babylon and the rebuilding of the Temple.

The claim that it was Zechariah's last resting place, which a number of experts have based on Christian sources and an ancient church mosaic showing the Holy Land known as the Madaba Map, has not been proved and is still being studied, dailymail.co.uk reported.