Y. LITVAK: An Age-Old Mystery: Where Is the Tomb of the Maccabees?

One of the mysteries puzzling archeologists for the past 150 years is the location of the tomb of the Maccabees. As described by people who claimed to have seen the tomb, it was built in the 2nd century BCE by the last surviving Maccabee brother, Simon. Given its large size and striking design, the tomb should have been easy to locate. Yet, it seems to have been swallowed up by the sands of time.

The Historical Records

The traditional Jewish sources do not address the location of the tomb of the Maccabees. The only mention is Seder Hadorot, quoting Gililot Eretz Yisrael, written and published by a 16th-century traveler, which identified the resting places of some of the Maccabees in Acre (Akko) and others in their hometown of Modi’in.

This is the same spot mentioned by the much older sources. For example, the First Book of Maccabees describes:

[Simon built] a high monument over the tomb of his father and brothers, whose facade, front and back, was polished stone, visible from a great distance. He erected seven pyramids, for his father and mother and his four brothers, arranged in pairs. For the pyramids he contrived an elaborate design, surrounding them with great columns surmounted with trophies of armor to serve as a perpetual memorial, and between the trophies he placed carved ships, plainly visible to all at sea. This mausoleum, which he designed at Modi’in, stands to this day.¹

Josephus, who lived in the 1st century CE, confirmed that the monument still existed in all its glory 200 years after it was built:

Simon also erected a very large monument for his father and his brethren, of white and polished stone, and raised it a great height, so as to be seen a long way off, and made cloisters about it, and set up pillars, which were of one stone apiece; a work it was wonderful to see. Moreover, he built seven pyramids also for his parents and his brethren, one for each of them, which were made very surprising, both for their largeness and beauty, which have been preserved to this day.²

The next mention of the Maccabee tomb appears in the writings of the non-Jewish scholar Eusebius, who lived in the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE.³ The tomb is also marked on the 6^th century CE Madaba map, a mosaic discovered in what is now Jordan.⁴ Throughout the millenia, the Land of Israel underwent many upheavals, and the tomb’s exact location in Modi’in became lost in the annals of history.

In 1870, a remarkable discovery by French explorer Victor Guerin sparked renewed interest in the Tomb of the Maccabees. While exploring Horbat Ha-Gardi in the vicinity of what was believed to be ancient Modi’in, Guerin found a large ashlar rectangular structure, 25 x 6.5 meters, next to a sheik’s tomb referred to locally as al-Qala’a, the fortress.

After clearing the walls and corners of the structure, Guerin discovered a burial chamber containing seven tombs covered with a pyramid-like structure and fragments of large columns lying adjacent. Excited by how closely his findings matched the description in the Book of Maccabees, Guerin concluded, “Indeed there is no room for doubt: I really found the tomb of the Maccabees!”⁵

Following Guerin’s reports, other visitors to the site concurred with his conclusions.

Examining the Evidence

Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau.

The following year, French archeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau spent six days excavating the site. The structure was indeed impressive! The walls were over a meter thick and built of fine ashlars fitted together precisely. He identified four separate chambers, the eastern one being particularly grand at 6 x 6 meters with well-built columns in each corner. The column bases were hewn into the bedrock, enabling the pillars to support a heavy roof made of thick stone slabs. Burial troughs were located along three of the chamber’s walls. On the fourth wall was an arch-shaped opening with door jambs that must have held doors leading inside the chamber. Outside the doors were two parallel walls that, Clermont-Ganneau concluded, formed a vestibule leading to the burial chamber.

But Clermont-Ganneau doubted that the roof was pyramid-shaped, as Guerin had thought. Moreover, Clermont-Ganneau found fragments of floor mosaic in the vestibule and in the chamber itself. The mosaic contained crosses–symbols that would obviously not be found in a Jewish burial site predating Christianity by many generations.

Clermont-Ganneau concluded that the structure was of Byzantine Christian origin, at least 500 years more recent than the Tomb of the Maccabees.⁶

The British Expedition

Though Clermont-Ganneau had dampened the excitement surrounding Guerin’s discovery, he did not rule out the possibility that the structure was built on top of an existing structure from an earlier time period.⁷

When the British explorers Claude Reignier Conder and Charles Tyrwhitt Drake visited the site in 1874, they resurrected Guerin’s theory. “It differs entirely from any sepulchral or other monument I have as yet seen in the country,”⁸ declared Condor. “In my opinion, there is no doubt that these are the tombs of the Maccabees,”⁹ Drake agreed.

Qubur el-Yahud: Tomb of the Jews

While exploring the area of Modi’in, Conder and his travel companion, Herbert Kitchener, discovered another burial site, referred to locally as Qubur el-Yahud, “tomb of the Jews.”

After examining the site, the pair concluded that these tombs were also of Christian origin, and likely did not predate the 12th century.¹⁰

But their conclusion was ignored by an enthusiastic group of visitors from Herzliya’s Hebrew Gymnasium. On Chanukah 1908, they embarked on a search of the Maccabees’ burial site. When they asked a local shepherd, he directed them to Qubur el-Yahud. Without further research, the group decided that this tomb must be the burial place of the Maccabees.¹¹

This belief was reinforced in 1909 by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, future president of the State of Israel. After exploring the area, Ben-Zvi wrote about Qubur el-Yahud, referring to it as the Maccabean graves.¹²

Today, a sign posted on Israel’s Highway 443 directs drivers to “Maccabean graves.” Following the sign, visitors reach Qubur el-Yahud. Even though contemporary archeological research does not support the theory that the graves at Qubur el-Yahud are those of the Maccabees, the site attracts many visitors, especially on Chanukah.

What Now?

The quest for the Maccabees’ true burial place resumed in the 21^st century when Israeli archeologists began to reexamine the structure Guerin originally uncovered at Horbat Ha-Gardi.

In 2009, researchers conducted geophysical tests using ground-penetrating radar and frequency-domain electromagnetism. They detected a large subterranean cavity beneath the sheik’s tomb, whose dimensions far exceeded what the 19^th-century explorers had uncovered. At the time, no actual excavation was conducted.

Archeologist Amit Re’em described the underground structure:

[a tomb of] magnificent splendor, built according to the best Jewish tradition, i.e., a rock-hewn tomb, a patrimony in which changes were made over the course of generations, the Hellenistic tradition, i.e., a built tomb including exedrae and architectural decorations, and the Egyptian tradition, i.e., it was probably covered with a pyramid that marks the ‘nefesh’ or soul.¹³

Re’em believes that the burial complex is consistent with the description of the tomb in the First Book of the Maccabees.¹⁴

In 2015, Re’em and another Israeli archeologist, Dan Shahar, directed the Israel Antiquities Authority’s excavation at Horbat Ha-Gardi. Local residents joined professional archeologists in the excitement of solving the riddle of the Maccabees’ tomb.

To their disappointment, the site had lost much of its grandeur since Guerin’s and Clermont-Ganneau’s reports. The structure had been looted and its stones carried away to be used in construction.

While they did not definitively identify the place as the resting place of the Maccabees, they did identify the remains of magnificent burial vaults, pillars large enough to support a second story, and other impressive remains,¹⁵ enough that the place is surely worthy of more exploration.

And so, the search for the elusive Tomb of the Maccabees continues.

Happy Chanukah!

Yehudis Litvak

Article and screenshots from https://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/article_cdo/aid/6728968/jewish/An-Age-Old-Mystery-Where-Is-the-Tomb-of-the-Maccabees.htm