Cave of Nicanor
About
Forty burial chambers opened off a rock-cut courtyard on Mount Scopus, one of the most elaborate Jewish tombs found in Jerusalem. An ossuary from the cave carries a Greek inscription naming the bones of Nicanor of Alexandria, the donor Jewish tradition credits with casting the bronze gates of the Second Temple's Court of Women. Its dressed facade and columned courtyard had stood for roughly a lifetime by the time Trajan died in 117 CE.
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
- Inscription, Ossuary inscription, Cave of Nicanor Greek: bones of Nicanor the Alexandrian who made the doors
Identifies the tomb owner with the Temple gate-donor named in Josephus and Talmudic sources.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →