A Street in Jerusalem thought to have been constructed at the direction of Pontius Pilate between AD 30 and 40. It leads from the Siloam pool to the Temple.
The Citadel, as it is known today, was the palace in which Herod’s family lived when they were in Jerusalem. After the Romans assumed direct control in AD 6, Roman governors such as Pontius Pilate (who lived mostly in Caesarea on the coast) would stay here in times of tension. This was the location of Jesus’ ‘trial’ by Pilate.
Crucifixion was a slow and painful way to die. In 1968 the remains of a man who had been crucified were discovered in Jerusalem. The photo shows that a nail driven through the victim’s heel bone held his feet to the cross.
The Garden Tomb, popularized as Golgotha by General Gordon of Khartoum in1883. The real place of Jesus’ burial is far more likely to have been where the Holy Sepulchre church now stands, but this tomb shows clearly how a body would be laid on the stone floor, with the head on the slightly raised ‘pillow’ at the far end.
Garden tomb interior
A first century rock-hewn tomb inside the Holy Sepulchre Church.
A tomb with rolling stone, near Mt Carmel.
The distinctive domes of the Holy Sepulchre church. The emperor Constantine built the first church here in the early 4th century. It was destroyed by the Moslem caliph Hakim in 1009. After rebuilding during the following 150 years the church has remained substantially as it was then.
Inside the Holy Sepulchre church, this elaborate monument over what is believed to be the place of Jesus’ burial dates only from the early 19th century, when it replaced an earlier structure destroyed by fire.
Holy Sepulchre church, mosaic of Christos Pantocrator (‘Almighty’) in the dome.
While the main church is mostly Roman Catholic, Christians of some other traditions have their altars and shrines. A community of Ethiopian monks lives here on the church’s roof and worships in a small chapel en route from here to the inside of the church.
An ossuary (a receptacle for the bones of the dead) discovered in Jerusalem in 1990 and thought to be that of the high priest Caiaphas, though some have questioned this identification. Among wealthy Jews of that time, a corpse would be buried in a family tomb, and after the flesh had decomposed the bones would be placed in a finely carved limestone chest such as this one. The name ‘Yehosef bar Qayafa’ (‘Joseph son of Caiaphas’) is inscribed on one side.
