[4][7] In Durchs Heilige Land (Basel, 1878), a journal of travel in the Holy Land, Swiss theologian Hans Konrad von Orelli said he believed that the Tombs of the Sanhedrin and the Tombs of the Kings (Kivrei HaMelakhim) were not necessarily connected to the names people associated them with.

[11] They are part of a giant necropolis situated to the north and east of the Old City of Jerusalem and dating to the Second Temple period.

[12] Graves were most likely placed at great distances from the Old City in order to preserve the special laws of purity incumbent on priests serving in the Temple in Jerusalem.

The entrance here is still lower, and I was obliged, in some parts, to lay flat down and slide in; but when once inside, I found large vaulted chambers.

[15] An elaborately carved Grecian[7] pediment above the large, square entrance is decorated with plant motifs, including acanthus leaves entwined with pomegranates and figs, representative of Judeo-Hellenistic burial art of the 1st century.

[15] After a step, a rock-hewn room open towards the forecourt and walled on the other three sides allows entrance to the central burial chamber.

[15] In the late 1860s, a French archaeologist, Louis Félicien de Saulcy, investigating the tombs, discovered an ossuary lid inscribed with the name Yitzchak (Isaac) in Hebrew, which he took back with him to France, where it is still held by the Louvre Museum.

According to Har-El, Jews placed their deceased either in stone sarcophagi in the niches; or laid them on the floor until the soft tissue decayed, and the collected their bones into ossuaries, which they placed in vaults.

[15] Williams and Willis quote an archaeologist who opines that the bodies, swathed in burial clothes, were placed directly into the niches, which were then closed or sealed with a stone slab.

In the 1930s, a young Shlomo Moussaieff claimed he found ancient coins in the caves and sold them to support himself after his father threw him out of the house.

[18] Following the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, the Old City of Jerusalem was captured by the Arab Legion; it was later recaptured by the Israelis in the Six-Day War of 1967.

[5] In the 1950s, the Jerusalem municipality planted pine[5] trees around the site, which is in close proximity to several other 1st- and 2nd-century rock-cut tombs,[19] and created a public garden called Sanhedria Park.