Image Details

Plan of the burial cave. Entering through a collapsed portion of the roof, excavators found four ossuaries in the center of the chamber and noted four 6-foot-deep by 1.5-foot-wide arched niches (I–IV on plan) carved into the cave’s soft limestone walls. Known as loculi (singular loculus, kokh and kokhim in Hebrew), these niches were an architectural tipoff that the cave had probably been used for Jewish burials. Four ossuaries had been removed from their niches by the workmen building the water park above the cave; two ossuaries were in situ inside loculus IV and six others were scattered about the interior of the cave. To the right of the entrance on the drawing is another pit, probably a bone repository, with a function similar to ossuaries.