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Jewish Leaders Place Guards at the Tomb

Approximately 800 tombs dating to the NT period have been found in and around Jerusalem. Some are quite elaborate, bearing witness to the ingenuity, creativity, and wealth of their owners. A typical tomb of this type was hewn into a natural cliff or rock face exposed by quarrying. The tomb would be fronted by an open courtyard with an adjacent monument of hewn stone erected to preserve the memory of those interred. These monuments could be over 50 feet (15 m) high and highly decorated, with architectural elements borrowed from the Greeks, Nabateans, Romans, and Egyptians. The tomb itself was entered through a door in a facade sometimes made to resemble the entrance of a temple or palace, complete with pillars, an entablature, and a pediment. Inside, a vestibule led to one or more rooms containing burial chambers. The ceilings of these rooms could be decorated in the style of palaces. The burial berths themselves were typically long, narrow openings hewn into the rock into which the body was laid endwise; otherwise they were horizontal benches crowned by an arch on which the body was laid lengthwise. All tombs of this type had spaces for multiple burials, some for dozens of bodies. A plug stone sealed the main entrance to the tomb chamber. Usually this stone was square or rectangular; occasionally it was round, shaped like a large, thick disc. After a body had been interred one year (and the flesh had decayed), the bones of the deceased could be placed into a limestone box called an ossuary. Very few tombs include an inscription identifying the inhabitants of the tomb, although individual ossuaries sometimes do.