Jerusalem - Tombs of the Kings

A little street runs past St George's Church (Anglican) in Jerusalem into Nablus Road. Immediately north of this church, where Saladin Street runs into Nablus Road (on right), are the very interesting Tombs of the Kings, within the area of the American Colony founded in 1881. At the foot of 26 broad rock-cut steps, to the right, is a vertical face hewn from the rock in which can be seen two water channels and cisterns. To the left is a round-arched doorway in the rock leading into a spacious courtyard with the rock-cut facade of the tombs. Three steps lead down into an antechamber with a Doric frieze, and in the left-hand corner of this is the low entrance to the interior, once sealed by a round stone (which is still there). Beyond this is a central chamber giving access to a number of tombs on two levels. The site was acquired by a French-Jewish Woman in 1874 and after her death passed to the French government. Sarcophagi from the tombs are now in the Louvre. The name "Tombs of the Kings" which was given to them was based on the assumption that this was the burial-place of the kings of Judah, but in fact the tombs date from a much later period. They were constructed by Queen Helen of Adiabene (present-day Kirkuk, between Mosul and Baghdad), a convert to the Jewish faith who came to live in Jerusalem about A.D. 45. Adiabene had won its independence after the fall of the Seleucid empire in the second century and its governors had become kings. Helen, a great benefactress of the people of Jerusalem, took the Jewish name of Sara Melaka (Queen Sarah), and this name, in Aramaic script, appears on one of the sarcophagi in the Louvre.