Have the Tombs of the Kings of Judah Been Found? Hershel Shanks, BAR 13:04, Jul-Aug 1987.

Bible and Beyond

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In a recent issue of BAR, archaeologists Gabriel Barkay and Amos Kloner described two magnificent burial caves from the First Temple period located just a few hundred yards north of Jerusalem’s old city (“Jerusalem Tombs From the Days of the First Temple,” BAR 12-02). Because these caves are now located on the grounds of the famous French institution of scholars known as the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, they are called the École Biblique tombs.

Each of these two adjacent burial cave complexes covers approximately 10,000 square feet and contains burial chambers (six in one complex, seven in the other) leading off an impressively large, high-ceilinged entrance chamber. Complete with elaborate double cornices and wall paneling carved in the rock, they are furnished with beautiful burial benches decorated with elegant headrests and parapets to frame the bodies of the deceased. Barkay and Kloner describe them as “the most elaborate and the most spacious First Temple period burial caves known to us in all Judah.” The workmanship is “expert” and “highly skilled.”

One of the École Biblique tomb complexes was built on a plan that used multiples of the short cubit (45 cm). The other used the long, or royal, cubit (52.5 cm). The one that used the royal cubit also contained a specially carved inner chamber with three unusual sarcophagi instead of burial benches.
Who were the people buried in these magnificent tombs? Obviously “an important and wealthy family,” our authors tell us.

“It may well be that the royal tombs closely resembled [these] burial caves,” the authors hesitantly state, adding, “we have no information whatever about the appearance of the tombs of the kings of the House of David.”

Could these large, expertly carved burial caves—the most beautiful in all Judah—be the actual tombs of the later kings of Judah, who lived when Solomon’s Temple still stood on the nearby Temple Mount, a few hundred yards to the south?

On visits to Jerusalem we heard whispers of such speculation, but they were just that—sheer speculation. We hesitated to give currency to what might be considered unwarranted conjecture. One prominent scholar even expressed relief that we had not mentioned this possibility in our coverage.

But in the 1986 issue of the scholarly journal Levant, Amos Kloner himself advanced this possibility.a So it can no longer be considered irresponsible to bring this suggestion out of the shadows.

Each of these burial caves could accommodate more than 20 corpses on the burial benches. They “were used originally for the burial of high-ranking personages, probably including kings,” Kloner tells us.

According to the Bible, King David and his early descendants were buried within the City of David. For example, it is said of King Asa- “They buried him in the tomb which he had hewn out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bier which had been filled with various kinds of spices prepared by the perfumer’s art; and they made a very great fire in his honor” (2 Chronicles 16-14). Gradually, the royal burial caves in the City of David became full. By the time King Hezekiah died (early seventh century B.C.), he had to be buried on “the ascent” or “the upper part” of the “tombs of the sons of David” (2 Chronicles 32-33). Beginning with King Manasseh, none of the kings of Judah was buried inside the City of David in the “tombs of the sons of David.”

During the late eighth and seventh centuries B.C. the population of Jerusalem expanded enormously. The area of the École Biblique, north of the walled city, became a fashionable burial area. What better place to lay to rest the kings of the House of David, now that the royal burial area inside the city was filled?

But Kloner does not rest his case on conjecture alone. He argues that in the first century A.D. the École Biblique tombs were referred to as the “Burial Caves of the Kings.” The reference is found in a description by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

Josephus, like Kloner, is not interested per se in whether these tombs are in fact the final resting place of the later kings of Judah; his intent is to describe the location of the famous “Third Wall,” which defended Jerusalem at the time of the Roman attack in 70 A.D. Kloner wants to identify the Third Wall with the so-called Sukenik-Mayer Wall (see “The Jerusalem Wall That Shouldn’t Be There,” BAR 13-03), and he attempts to do so in part on the basis of Josephus’s description of the location of the Third Wall.

According to Josephus, the Third Wall runs “opposite the monuments of Helena (Queen of Adiabene and daughter of King Izates) and proceed[s] past the royal caverns.”b

The “monuments of Helena” refers to the mausoleum of this Syrian queen who converted to Judaism about 30 A.D. and was buried in a magnificent Hellenistic tomb, popularly (and incorrectly) known today as the Tomb of the Kings.c

The Greek word for “caverns,” as in “royal caverns,” can also be understood, Kloner tells us, as rock-cut burial caves. The Greek word is found in several ancient inscriptions referring to rock-cut burial caves. So we may translate this reference in Josephus as “royal burial caves” instead of “royal caverns.”

The Greek word translated “past” (the royal burial caves) can be interpreted as “right through,” “in the midst of,” “along,” “past,” etc. Kloner believes that Josephus is describing the path of the Third Wall (from west to east) as passing south of Queen Helena’s mausoleum and north of the royal burial caves. Kloner argues that Josephus is referring to the École Biblique tombs just north of the old city when he speaks of the “royal burial caves.”d If this is so, it would strengthen Kloner’s argument that the so-called Sukenik-Mayer wall is Josephus’s Third Wall, because Queen Helena’s mausoleum runs just north of this wall and the “royal burial caves” just south.

If Kloner is right, these magnificent First Temple period burial caves on the grounds of the École Biblique were known in Josephus’s time as the “royal burial caves,” and very likely they once sheltered the bones of the later kings of Judah.

a. “The ‘Third Wall’ in Jerusalem and the ‘Cave of the Kings’ (Josephus, The Jewish War V. 147),” Levant, Vol. 18 (1986), p. 121.

b. Josephus, The Jewish War (H. Thackeray, translator) Loeb Classical Library, V. 147.

c. In the 19th century, this magnificent (and as we now know) Hellenistic tomb was thought to be the burial place of the later kings of Judah. In 1863, a sarcophagus with an inscription was discovered in the tomb, which enabled it to be identified as the mausoleum of Queen Adiabene. Unfortunately, it is still called, to the confusion of tourists, the Tomb of the Kings.

d. Some have argued that Josephus is referring instead to the quarry known as Zedekiah’s cave under the north wall of the Old City. But this huge cavern is a quarry, not a burial cave.