Ancient Israelite Tombs and Burial Practices

What did ancient Israelites believe happens when you die?

The evidence in the Bible for beliefs about death is difficult to interpret and not altogether consistent. The idea of “the world to come” or reward and punishment in the next world is a later idea. Most scholars think that in the biblical period it was believed that all the dead continue a kind of semiexistence in Sheol, the netherworld, which lies beneath the earth. Recently, though, it has been argued that most (but not all) references to Sheol apply only to the fate of the wicked, or to those whose lives were cut short, and that the righteous dead live on in some other manner or place. The living could help the dead by invoking their names in speech or on monuments. It is not clear how the evidence from tombs relates to these ideas, but it likewise reflects the belief that death was not the absolute end of a person’s existence, and that the living could help the dead by burying articles of daily life with them and by offering their spirits food and drink.

How did Israelites bury their dead?

Burial grounds near cities were usually outside the city (apart from the tombs of Judahite kings that were inside the City of David in Jerusalem). Most people were probably buried in simple holes in the ground (see 2 Kings 23:6; Jeremiah 26:23), but almost no graves of this type have been found in areas where Israelites lived; they have been found in areas inhabited by other ethnic groups. For those who could afford it, the ideal burial place was a family tomb such as the Cave of Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah were buried (Genesis 49:29–32; 50:13). Most of the tombs found in Israel by archaeologists are in Judah and are, indeed, multigenerational tombs, located in natural or reworked caves on the slope of a tell or in the cliff of a nearby wadi. From the eighth century BCE on, the typical tomb consisted of a square or rectangular chamber entered through a small opening that was probably closed with a stone that fit into it. A few steps led down into the chamber. Along the side and back walls was a continuous, waist-high ledge, cut from the rock, with room along each wall for one to three bodies. The body was entombed clothed. It was not covered with earth nor, usually, placed in a coffin. In some tombs, particularly around Jerusalem, horseshoe-shaped “headrests” were carved on the surface of the ledge where the body was placed. Articles from daily life were buried along with the dead; these could include containers for food and wine and, probably, perfume (to counteract the stench of decaying bodies), as well as lamps, jewelry, amulets, seals, clothing fasteners, items for personal grooming, weapons and tools, human and animal figurines, or model furniture. After the body decomposed, the bones and the objects buried with the deceased were gathered up and moved to a special repository—a sunken pit hewn under one of the ledges or in a back corner of the chamber—to clear space for later burials, probably from the same family. Family members probably continued to provide food and drink offerings for the dead at the tombs (see Deuteronomy 26:14). With its central open space, two parallel ledges, and a broad rear ledge perpendicular to them, the tomb resembles the typical Israelite four-room house, perhaps reflecting a conception of the tomb as an “eternal abode” (Ecclesiastes 12:5). Cemeteries on the outskirts of ancient Jerusalem (they are within today’s Jerusalem) contain several types of elaborate tombs.