Rock-cut tombs in ancient Israel
[1] The custom lapsed a millennium, however, before re-emerging in the earliest Israelite tombs, dating to the 9th century BCE in Jerusalem.
[clarification needed][3] The use of such tombs was generally reserved for the middle- and upper-classes, and each typically belonged to a single nuclear or extended family.
[4] Rock-cut tombs from the late First Temple period have been discovered in several locations in Jerusalem, the capital city of the Kingdom of Judah.
[5] A second tomb type described by Ussishkin has flat ceilings and one, two, or three chambers of well-dressed stone carefully squared into spacious rooms.
[6] At the beginning of the Hasmonean period, under the influence of Hellenistic burial customs from Marisa, members of the elite were buried in wooden coffins inside shafts known in Latin as loculi and in Hebrew as kokhim.
[6] However, the regular type of burial during the Early Roman period (c. 63 BCE – 70 CE), used by the non-elite population, was done in trenches.
[6] Some support the theory that in the Galilee, rock-cut tombs only had a comeback after the destruction of Jerusalem and the influx of refugees from Judaea after 70 CE (Keddie 2019, p. 237).
[6] Around 20–15 BCE, Judaean elites started using ossuaries made of limestone, a custom that continued in the Jerusalem area until little after 70 CE (Keddie 2019, p. 230).
[7] Constructed circa 50 CE, this is the only funeral monument that can be positively recognized which was recorded by ancient writers, such as Josephus, Pausanias, Eusebius, and Jerome.
[7] The cruciform, 5-chamber, so-called "Herod's Family Tomb", a burial cave complex located behind King David Hotel on King David Street in a park in the general area of Yemin Moshe, is built of perfectly cut and joined Herodian-type ashlars and was found to still contain two in situ decorated sarcophagi, all dated to the first century BCE.
[10] Its popular name stuck in spite of another tomb near the Damascus Gate being long considered as the actual funerary tower of Herod's family,[10] which again was contradicted by the finds at Herodium.
Elaborate rock-cut tombs with designs resembling those found in Jerusalem of the late Second Temple period were discovered in multiple sites in Western Samaria, including Khirbet Kurkush, Deir ed-Darb and Mokata 'Aboud, and in the Western Hebron Hills, including Khirbat al-Simia, Rujm el-Fihjeh and Khirbet el Jof.
Magen also raised the possibility that their hewing is connected to the flight of Jewish craftsmen to Samaria and the Hebron Hills with the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem and perhaps even a little earlier, when the construction enterprises in the city began to dwindle and many quarrymen were left without employment.
She dates the tombs to the period before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, although it's possible that the practice of construction in the Jerusalem style continued after that.
The ruins of Beit She'arim (Sheikh Abrekh in Arabic) in the Galilee preserve a vast necropolis with catacombs containing a large number of rock-cut Jewish tombs from the late 2nd to 6th centuries CE.
[3] The simplest tombs feature a single, square chamber with a recess in the center with benches along its edges to allow space for visitors to stand.
A repository served as an ossuary and secondary burial site to house the remains of the newly deceased with those of ancestors past.
