Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 20, 2026

The Great Tombs of Jerusalem’s Pilgrimage Roads

Installing memory into the topography.

In the times of the Second Temple, anyone who walked along the roads leading to and from Jerusalem would pass by tombs carved into the rocks, where local Jews had buried their dead. Archaeologists have identified many such structures, whose presence is also mentioned in the Talmud and in the Gospel of Matthew. Boaz Zissu and Omri Yitzhak Abadi examine the significance of these tombs and their placement:

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