Tomb of Absalom
About
A 20-meter monolithic tower rises from the floor of the Kidron Valley, its lower half carved from solid rock and its upper half built up in ashlar masonry to a concave conical roof. Tradition long linked it to Absalom, King David's rebellious son who died a thousand years earlier, but its Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic architectural blend points instead to the 1st century CE. Vaulted chambers cut into its square base held actual burials. It stands just meters from the tombs of Zechariah and the Bnei Hezir family.
What happened here
The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.
In ancient writing
- Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 7.243
Josephus records that Absalom built himself a marble pillar/monument in the King's Dale two stadia from Jerusalem, which by his own day (1st century CE) was popularly called 'Absalom's Hand' or monument, matching the traditional identification of this Kidron Valley tomb.
Sources
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