Tomb of Benei Hezir
archaeological site in East Jerusalem
The Tomb of Benei Hezir (Hebrew: קבר בני חזיר), previously known as the Tomb of Saint James, is the oldest of four monumental rock-cut tombs that stand in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem, adjacent to the Tomb of Zechariah and a few meters from the Tomb of Absalom. It dates to the Second Temple period. It is a complex of burial caves. The tomb was originally accessed from a single rock-cut stairwell which descends to the tomb from the north. At a later period an additional entrance was created by quarrying a tunnel from the courtyard of the monument known as "the Tomb of Zechariah". This is also the contemporary entrance to the burial complex.
Location and geological setting
The tomb is hewn into a cliff face approximately 15 metres (49 ft) high on the eastern escarpment of the Kidron Valley, across from the Temple Mount. Its façade is elevated, with the floor lying about 6 metres (20 ft) above the base of the cliff.
The cliff features several geological units: the harder, dense limestone of the Shivta Formation and the softer Nezer and Menuha formations above it. The Tomb of Benei Hazir, like the adjacent Tomb of Zechariah and the lower part of the Tomb of Absalom, is cut into the Shivta limestone; the overlying formations along the same slope support, by contrast, the burials of the modern Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tomb of Benei Hezir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.