The discovery of this tomb, with the peculiar characteristics which marked its construction, and the objects which surrounded it, afforded a fertile subject of conjecture. In order that my readers may understand the considerations to which it gave rise, I must enter a little more fully than I have hitherto done into the subject of the ancient Jewish methods of sepulture. These consist of sundry varieties, and it has been attempted to fix their dates from the variations which have been observed, as well as to discriminate by them between Christian and Jewish tombs. So far as my own investigation goes, I have been unable to fix any positive rule in the matter, my experience being that one no sooner forms a theory based upon observation, than one makes some new discovery which upsets it. Roughly, the tombs which I have investigated may be divided into the following categories: 1. Rock-hewn tombs containing nothing but loculi; 2. Rock-hewn tombs containing nothing but kokim; 3. Rock-hewn tombs containing both; 4. Masonry tombs containing either loculi or kokim, or both together; 5. Sarcophagi; 6. Rock-sunk tombs. A rock-hewn tomb is an excavation made in the solid rock (advantage generally has been taken of a natural cavern), and round the sides of the chambers so formed, which vary in dimensions, are ranged the receptacles for the dead. In some cases these are more than one chamber. In Sheik Abreikh, for instance, I counted fifteen opening one into another. Sometimes these are one above another, and one has to enter them from below through a hole in the stone roof which forms the floor of the upper chamber. A koka is a rectangular sloping space cut into the rock, tunnel fashion, extending six feet horizontally, sufficiently wide and high to admit of a corpse being pushed into it. A loculus is a trough cut laterally into the rock, which is arched above so as to form what is called an arcosolium. This trough is generally about six feet long, two feet six broad, and two feet deep. It is thus separated from the chamber by a wall of rock two feet high. A large tomb will contain as many as twelve loculi ranged around it.