"There is no gold or silver in this grave, but the bones of the dead and his servant. Curse on whoever opens it." Currently, Batn Al-Hawa area above the Kidron Valley in occupied Jerusalem.
The homes of the Jerusalemites - some of which date back to the Mamluk era - were crowded on top of each other, until the front of the mountain, which was dug at the foot of about 50 graves, extended horizontally, from north of Batn Al-Hawa to Bir Ayoub in the south in the town of Silwan. Looking at it from afar, one sees square openings spaced differently, and notices a unique building at a higher level, known as the tomb of Pharaoh's daughter.
Novels and media marginalization
A few meters away from the tomb of "the daughter of Pharaoh", lies Tantur Pharaoh of the second century BC, who caught the media and archaeological lights far from the tomb of the daughter of Pharaoh, which was built about 5 centuries or more before him, and remains to this day a mystery about which no confirmed account has been proven.
The grave of the daughter of Pharaoh and the 50 graves were not mentioned in the books of the first Arab archaeologists or travelers who passed by Jerusalem, and it seems that the entrances to the square graves have been tightly closed over many centuries, and no one could notice them, and an inspector at the entrance to the tomb sees surrounding cavities indicating its prior closure. It was opened or dug up later.
Below some entrances, small square cavities dug by monks in the Roman or Byzantine periods, and they placed lanterns in them to light the dark winding road at night, after some of them took the graves as a place of residence or seclusion.
Attic graves
It is likely that the researcher in the history of Jerusalem, Robin Abu Shamsiyya - to Al-Jazeera Net - that these graves belong to aristocratic families of the people, who lived in the Iron Age in Jerusalem (1006-586 BC), specifically since the entry of the Prophet David, peace be upon him, to Jerusalem until the Babylonian captivity.
The first discovery of one of the graves was in 1874 by the French archaeologist Charles Clermont Jano, who found two openings opposite each other, written in ancient Hebrew on them, “This is a tomb… Yahoo (the name is amputated) above the house, there is no gold or silver in this tomb, but there are the bones of the dead and his servant. Curse whoever opens it. " At the time, Jano believed that this tomb belonged to the royal superintendent in the court of King Hezekiah in the eighth century BC, but Abu Shamsiyya did not confirm this information.
The second and largest discovery began in 1970 and lasted 6 years at the hands of the Israeli archaeologists David Auseshkin and Gabriel Barkai, where they focused on the Silwan and Batn al-Hawa area south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where the graves are located, part of which actually overlapped with the homes of ancient Jerusalemites.
Distinguish from the rest of the graves
The two scholars concluded that the tomb, which is unique from the rest of the graves, is “the daughter of Pharaoh, one of the wives of the Prophet Solomon, peace be upon him,” relying in this on the majesty of the tomb and its royal construction method that resembles the style of pharaonic tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, but they did not provide other evidence to support their claim.
The researcher Abu Shamsiyeh describes the tomb of Pharaoh's daughter from the outside as a square building topped by a small pyramid, which was removed in the third century AD when Byzantine monks inhabited it, and at its entrance an inscription carved into a pale pink rock, but it was later disturbed by natural or human factors.
Regarding the interior of the grave, the researcher says that it is a narrow room that resembles a rocky cave, with the tomb in the center and on both sides of the tomb with seats and supports, stressing that the builder intended to distinguish it from other graves around it.
As for the rest of the graves, Abu Shamsiyeh attributes the method of their construction to the late Canaanite and Jebian periods, citing the “Jabiyya” graves system, which contains collective graves inside the rocks, and around it are cavities for lighting and a place for the deceased’s belongings, in addition to a side “terrace” on which the body is placed 40 days before burial.
The method of burial in rocks remained followed by the Greeks and Romans in Jerusalem, because they believed that it was more stable and prepared for the transition to another life other than burial in the dust. Most of the visitors and residents of Jerusalem - of all religions - were keen to burial around the hill of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, because they believed it was the closest point to heaven.
Occupational proportions are fragile
Today, these graves completely overlook the southern part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Israeli occupation did not provide an opportunity to attribute them to it and prove its right to Jerusalem, as it was claimed that they date back to the era of the so-called First Temple.
Abu Shamsiyeh refutes these claims of the occupation that the return of the graves to the Iron Age - or what the occupation calls the era of the First Temple - does not necessarily mean that their owners are Jews, as the city of Jerusalem was teeming in that period with many ethnicities, and the blood of the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hittites and Amorites flowed in its veins. Even if the burial was a Jew, this does not confirm the Jewishness of the place.
He adds that the inscriptions in the ancient Hebrew language are not related to Judaism, as Hebrew at that time was derived from the Akkadian and Cuneiform languages, and it was largely similar to the Phoenician, Ammonite and Moab languages, and non-Jews also wrote in it.
He concludes by asking, "What is striking about the matter is that the graves are largely neglected and filled with dirt and trash, far from the attention of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, so how can this neglect equate to its attribution ?!"