Tomb of Benei Hezir
About
A Hebrew inscription carved above the entrance identifies this as the burial cave of the Benei Hezir, a family of priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple. Two rock-cut columns stand between pilasters below a Doric frieze, making it the oldest of the four monumental Second Temple-era tombs clustered in the Kidron Valley. Scholars date its excavation to the Hasmonean period, roughly the 2nd or early 1st century BCE. It remains a burial complex rather than a solid monument like its neighbors.
What happened here
Roman burial is a family matter conducted in public. The dead are carried out of town, cremated or laid in the ground, and mourned with formal noise; the funeral of anyone important is a procession with masks of the ancestors carried by hired men. The tomb that follows is designed to be read by strangers on the road: name, age, offices, sometimes a trade shown in relief, often a line addressed directly to the passer-by. Ordinary people appear here as they nowhere else — a baker with his ovens carved on the front, a freedman naming the woman he could finally marry, a child's age given in days. Anniversaries bring the family back with food and wine.
In ancient writing
- Hebrew funerary inscription, Tomb of Benei Hezir, Kidron Valley, CIIP I/1 (Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, vol. I: Jerusalem, Part 1), no. 137 137
Inscription carved on the architrave above the tomb's facade naming Eleazar, Hania, Jo'azar, Judah, Shimon and Johanan, sons of Joseph son of Oved, and Joseph and Eleazar sons of Hania, as priests of the sons of Hezir -- identifying the tomb as belonging to a priestly family active in the Second Temple period.
Sources
Nearby
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