Absalom's Tomb

The so-called "Tomb of Absalom" is not only a burial structure in its own right, with its upper part serving as a nefesh (funeral monument) for the tomb in its lower part, but it was probably also meant as a nefesh for the adjacent burial cave system known as the "Cave" or "Tomb of Jehoshaphat", with which it forms one entity [1]. In 2003, a mid-4th-century inscription on one of the walls of the monument was discovered [1]. It reads, "This is the tomb of Zachariah, the martyr, the holy priest, the father of John" [1]. A second inscription of the same age discovered in 2003 says the monument is "the tomb of Simeon who was a very just man and a very devoted el(der) and (who was) waiting for the consolation of the people" [1]. The two inscriptions, discovered and deciphered by Joe Zias and Émile Puech, support the concept known from Byzantine period sources such as Theodosius (c. 530) that a tradition existed at the time, wrongly identifying the 1st-century monument as the tomb of James, the brother of Jesus; Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist; and Simeon [1].