Word Finder - tombs

definition

A small building (or "vault") for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except for its entrance) in a cemetery, or it may be inside a church proper or in its crypt. Single tombs may be permanently sealed; those for families (or other groups) have doors for access whenever needed.

definition

A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited; a grave.

definition

One who keeps secrets.

definition

To bury.

A number of tombs belonging to the Roman necropolis were discovered in 1883.

The tombs of their inhabitants are of two classes - the so-called tombe dei giganti, or giants' tombs, and the domus de gianas, or houses of the spirits.

It contains among other tombs that of John Hunyady.

He crossed the Tigris, destroyed the towns and spoiled the tombs of Arbela; but when Artabanus advanced at the head of an army, he retired to Carrhae.

Some of the so-called " Orphic tablets," metrical inscriptions engraved on small plates of gold, chiefly dating from the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., have been discovered in tombs in southern Italy, Crete and Rome.

The town was the capital of the former duchy of Zweibrucken, and the Alexander-Kirche contains the tombs of the dukes.

Lastly, Peisistratus carried out the purification of Delos, the sacred island of Apollo of the Ionians; all the tombs were removed from the neighbourhood of the shrine, the abode of the god of light and joy.

A little to the south of a village called Deir Diwan, and one hour's journey south-east from Bethel, is the site of an ancient place called Khirbet Haiydn, indicated by reservoirs hewn in the rock, excavated tombs and foundations of hewn stone.

The influence of Hellenism over them is shown by finds in the tombs and the fact that they spoke the Greek language as well as their own (bilingues in Ennius).

But the contents of early tombs and dwellings and indications supplied by such objects as stone vases and seal-stones show that the Cretans had already attained to a considerable degree of culture, and had opened out communication with the Nile valley in the time of the earliest Egyptian dynasties.

The contents of the royal tombs, on the other hand, reveal a wholesale correspondence with the fabrics of the first, and, to a less degree, the second Late Minoan age, as illustrated by the relics belonging to the Middle Period of the later palace at Cnossus and by those of the royal villa at Hagia Triada.

The chronological centre of the great beehive tombs seems to be slightly lower.

These ancient indications of a Minoan connexion with Sicily have now received interesting confirmation in the numerous discoveries, principally due to the recent excavations of P. Orsi, of arms and painted vases of Late Minoan fabric in Bronze Age tombs of the provinces of Syracuse and Girgenti (Agrigentum) belonging to the late Bronze Age.

The contents of a series of tombs at Mochlos throw an entirely new light on the civilization of the Early Minoan age.

There is, besides, a Roman cemetery known as the Aliscamps (Elysii Campi), consisting of a short avenue once bordered by tombs, of which a few still remain.

Etruscan tombs have been found in the neighbourhood, but it is not certain that the present town stands on an ancient site.

As a rule the buildings of Palmyra do not possess any architectural individuality, but these tombs are an exception.

In this connexion Yaqui tells a curious story of the opening of one of the tombs by the caliph, which in spite of fabulous incidents, recalling the legend of Roderic the Goth, shows some traces of local knowledge.

Some rock tombs hard by may be of earlier than Roman date.

Later tombs are piled upon and cut through the old ones.

Among the monuments of this age discovered in the surrounding districts are the rock hewn tombs of Spata, accidentally revealed by a landslip in 1877, and the domed sepulchre at Menidi, near the ancient Acharnae, excavated by Lolling in 1879.

They consist of chambers of various sizes, some of which were evidently human habitations, together with cisterns, channels, seats, steps, terraces and quadrangular tombs, all cut in the rock.

Some of the rock chambers originally intended for tombs were afterwards converted, perhaps under pressure of necessity, into habitations, as in the case of the so-called " Prison of Socrates," which consists of three chambers horizontally excavated and a small round apartment of the " beehive " type.

In view of the ancient law which forbade burial within the city, the tombs within the circuit of the city walls must either be earlier than the time of Themistocles or several centuries later; in the similar rocktombs on the neighbouring slopes of the Acropolis and Areopagus both Mycenaean and Dipylon pottery have been found.

But the numerous vertically excavated tombs outside the walls are of late date and belong for the most part to the Roman period.

The north slope of the Areopagus, where a number of early tombs were found, was also explored, and the limits of the Agora on the south and north-west were approximately ascertained.

The famous seat of the Platonic philosophy was a gymnasium enlarged as a public park by Cimon; it lay about a mile to the north-west of the Dipylon Gate, with which it was connected by a street bordered with tombs.

In this neighbourhood were found a great number of tombs containing vases of all periods, which furnish a marvellous record of the development of Attic ceramic art.

By 1856 over 15,000 tombs had, it was calculated, been opened.

Etruscan tombs have been found on the Isola Bisentina, in the lake; and on the west bank was the town of Visentium, Roman inscriptions belonging to which have been found.

Gardiner, who publishes with them the tombs of Amenemhet and Antefoker, under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society.

As it stands it is of the highest interest, showing remarkable Decorated work, with windows of beautiful and unusual design, and a magnificent series of canopied tombs.

Yet general sentiment seems to have given a stronger sanction to this sort of connexion; the names of husband and wife are freely used in relation to slaves on the stage, and even in the laws, and in the language of the tombs.

John Clayton, afterwards chaplain of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, who remained a strong High Churchman; James Hervey, author of Meditations among the Tombs, and Theron and Aspasio; Benjamin Ingham, who became the Yorkshire evangelist; and Thomas Broughton, afterwards secretary of the S.P.C.K., were members of the Holy Club, and George Whitefield joined it on the eve of the Wesleys' departure for Georgia.

Other catacombs and tombs have been opened in Kom es-Shugafa Hadra (Roman) and Ras et-Tin (painted).

The earliest literary papyrus is that known, from the name of its former owner, as the Prisse papyrus, and now preserved at Paris, containing a work composed in the reign of a king of the fifth dynasty, and computed to be itself of the age of upwards of 2500 years B,C. The papyri discovered in Egypt have often been found in tombs, and in the hands, or swathed with the bodies, of mummies.

It is impossible not to be struck with the remarkable analogy between these rock-hewn chairs and those discovered in the Etruscan tombs, of the purpose of which no satisfactory explanation has been given.

Interment in rock-hewn tombs, " as the manner of the Jews is to bury," had been practised in Rome by the Jewish settlers for a considerable period anterior to the rise of the Christian Church.

The greater part of the tombs stand on either side of the galleries in square recesses (like the table-tombs of the Roman catacombs), and are rudely fashioned to imitate sarcophagi.

The rock-hewn tombs of Etruria scarcely come under the category of catacombs, in the usual sense, being rather independent family burial-places, grouped together in a necropolis.

The construction of the tombs commonly keeps up the same analogy between the cities of the living and those of the dead.

The tombs in some instances form subterranean groups more analogous to the general idea of a catacomb.

A few tombs of the Roman period are preserved.

Here are tombs of several rulers and princes of Saxony, including those of Albert and Ernest, the founders of the two existing branches of the Saxon house.

Not far off, similar relics were found at Sobunar, Zlatiste and Debelobrdo; iron and bronze ornaments, vessels and weapons, often of elaborate design, occur in the huts and cemeteries of Glasinac, and in the cemetery of Jezerine, where they are associated with objects in silver, tin, amber, glass, &c. Among the numerous finds made in other districts may be mentioned the discovery, at Vrankamer, near Bihac, of 98 African coins, the oldest of which dates from 300 B.C. Many vestiges of Roman rule survive, such as roads, mines, ruins, tombs, coins, frescoes and inscriptions.

The date of these walls has not as yet been ascertained, recent excavations, which led to the discovery of a few tombs in which the earliest objects showing Greek influence may go back to the 7th century B.C., not having produced any decisive evidence on the point.

The two great domes above the tombs, the four lofty minarets and part of the facade of this shrine, are overlaid with gold, and from whatever direction the traveler approaches Bagdad, its glittering domes and minarets are the first objects which meet his eye.

In 1819 he returned to England, and published in the following year an account of his travels and discoveries entitled Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, &c. He also exhibited during 1820-1821 facsimiles of the tomb of Seti I.

In 1829 his widow published his drawings of the royal tombs at Thebes.

Margherita, founded in 1197, has fine canopied Gothic tombs of the Falcone family.