Browse Items (8 total)

This building is a mausoleum, i.e. a monumental burial structure, from the 2nd-3rd century CE. Bodies were placed inside the building in sarcophagi (lidded coffins carved out of limestone). Mausolea are extremely rare in Roman Palestine. The two…

There are a few monumental tombs outside and below the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, in the Jehoshaphat Valley. The one in this picture is known anachronistically as the Tomb of Absalom (Absalom was the biblical son of David who…

This inscription was discovered in a tomb in a northern suburb of modern Jerusalem. It is written in Aramaic, a common language of the Second Temple period, but the script, called Paleo-Hebrew, is like the one that was used hundreds of years earlier,…

This photograph shows the back wall of the Sidonian Tomb at Maresha, called the 'Sidonian' Tomb because of an inscription designates the tomb's deceased as members of a Sidonian colony living at Maresha. Each of the openings on the walls is a…

This detail photograph is from the 'Sidonian Tomb' at Maresha, so called because of an inscription that says that the deceased were members of a Sidonian colony at Maresha. In this photograph we see a painting of a horse-mounted hunter accompanied by…

This photograph shows the entrance stairs leading down into the Sidonian Tomb at Maresha, so called because of an inscription that says that the deceased who were buried here were members of a Sidonian community in Maresha. The paintings on the walls…

This detail photograph is from the 'Sidonian Tomb,' so called because of an inscription that says that the deceased were members of a Sidonian colony living at Maresha. In this photograph we see paintings of animals from Egypt, along with their Greek…

The photographed image (on the right) and line drawing (on the left) are of one of two Ketef Hinnom amulets. It is a small (1.0 x 3.75 inches), thin sheet of silver on which an inscription was lightly inscribed. It is important because they date to…