Biblical Archaeology Review

Additional support for this suggestion comes from the Late Iron Age pottery found in other excavations in the vicinity—close to the Damascus Gate in R. W. Hamilton’s excavations in the 1930s, and in the German excavations under Saint Paul’s Hospice adjoining the Garden Tomb, as well as in additional digs extending up to the line of the Third Wall.

Hanauer also published the “Stone of Venus” I mentioned in the footnote above; Beckholt was accused of manufacturing this object himself.

Because the Garden Tomb cave was refurbished and altered for secondary use during the Byzantine period, it bears none of the other characteristics of Byzantine burial caves. Several such Byzantine caves were discovered in the courtyard of the St. Étienne Monastery near the Garden Tomb, and they all differ from the Garden Tomb cave in plan, character and architectural details.

An ossuary is a stone box used to collect bones for secondary burial after the flesh had decayed. This was customary mainly in Jerusalem and its vicinity in the Second Temple period.

D. Davis and Amos Kloner, “A Burial Cave of the Late Israelite Period on the Slopes of Mt. Zion,” Qadmoniot XI, 41 (1978), pp. 16–19 (in Hebrew). It is known as the tomb of H\amîohel based on the inscription found on a small seal discovered in the cave.

The area surrounding the Garden Tomb is within the line of the Third Wall from the Second Temple period though it was built by Herod Agrippa about one decade after the crucifixion and therefore, located as it was inside the city wall, it would not have been a permissible burial area.

See “A New Generation of Israeli Archaeologists Comes of Age,” BAR 10:03, and “Bronze Bull Found in Israelite ‘High Place’ From the Days of the Judges,” BAR 09:05.

One of the finds was a conical object of white stone covered with small holes resembling windows. Some scholars identified the stone as having some connection with the worship of Venus. This “Stone of Venus” and some of the other objects Hanauer published were, according to Hanauer, probably manufactured by the excavator Beckholt himself, who carved them as souvenirs for tourists. The remaining objects published by Hanauer were unearthed by Beckholt in a pit he had dug somewhere on the premises of the Garden Tomb.

Today, the grounds of the Franciscan White Sisters Convent on Nablus Road cover Conder’s cave.