Who Was Buried in the Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter?

Home > Magazines > BAR > January/February 2013

The Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter is one of Jerusalem’s most neglected sites, despite being one of the most complete, distinctive and magnificent First Temple period tombs in the city. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the City of David, the ridge south of the Temple Mount where the original city of Jerusalem was located. The imposing Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter sits in the village of Silwan, overlooking the City of David on the opposite hill to the east. But no one goes there. Perhaps that is because the Silwan villagers are now, as they have been historically, […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

See Hershel Shanks, “The Tombs of Silwan,” BAR 20:03.

See Robert Deutsch, “Tracking Down Shebnayahu, Servant of the King,” BAR 35:03.

Endnotes

David Ussishkin, The Village of Silwan: The Necropolis from the Period of the Judean Kingdom (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society; Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1993).

Only a bit of the sunken panel survived on the right side. A number of other panels intended for inscriptions, but for unknown reasons never inscribed, have been found. A similar sunken panel has recently been highlighted by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron in the City of David at the opening to Tunnel IV. Part of the panel on which the famous Siloam Inscription is inscribed is also empty, as if the surviving inscription is incomplete. Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, “The Date of the Siloam Tunnel Reconsidered,” Tel Aviv 38 (2011), pp. 147–157.

It is true that the word “cursed” in this inscription is spelled with an additional letter, a wow, so-called plene spelling in which the wow serves as a vowel between the two resh’s. Both spellings were used at this time.

Full citations may be found in Gabriel Barkay, “The Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter—A Reassessment,” in Eyal Meiron, ed., City of David—Studies of Ancient Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Megalim Institute, 2011). In each case, “curse” is spelled without the wow, so-called defective spelling.

There may have been another monolithic tomb, in Jerusalem’s northern necropolis, north of Damascus Gate; see Gabriel Barkay, “Three First-Temple Period Burial Caves North of Damascus Gate and the Date of Jerusalem’s Northern Moat,” Cathedra 83 (1997), pp. 18–20 (Hebrew).

Nahman Avigad, Ancient Monuments in the Kidron Valley (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1954 [Hebrew]).

For more details, see Barkay, “The Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter—A Reassessment.”