Image Details

Courtesy of the Semitic Museum, Harvard University

Fisher, one rock-cut cave is pictured underneath the palace court, or Room 7. The vertical section drawing below was drawn along the east-west line “G-H” on the plan and also shows an underground chamber, labeled “Rock ‘Tomb’ 7”. Norma Franklin concluded that the “Rock ‘Tomb’ 7” on the section drawing indicated another rock-cut cave and proceeded to reconstruct a second (phantom) tomb, this one along the G-H line, south of the tomb she saw on the Harvard top plan. Author David Ussishkin explains, however, that Franklin misinterpreted Fisher’s section drawing and invented the second tomb. The “Rock ‘Tomb’ 7” shown on the section drawing is in fact the very same one shown on the top plan, and it was drawn with dotted lines on the section to indicate that it lies farther north, rather than directly on the G-H line. There is no second tomb. Furthermore, says Ussishkin, not even the existing rock-cut installation is a tomb. It lacks several features and characteristics of a tomb, such as grave goods and a place for the body. The fact that Fisher labeled it a “tomb” in quotation marks on his drawings indicates that the scholars of the Harvard expedition recognized its similarity to a tomb but concluded that it wasn’t ever actually used as a burial cave.