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An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary ("os" is "bone" in Latin). The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than in coffins. In Persia, the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function from the earliest times (c. 3,000 years ago) and called it astudan (literally, "the place for the bones"). There are many rituals and regulations in the Zoroastrian faith concerning the astudans. During the Second Temple period, Jewish burial customs were varied, differing based on class and belief. For the wealthy, one option available included primary burials in burial caves, followed by secondary burials in ossuaries. These bone boxes were placed in smaller niches of the burial caves, on the benches used for the desiccation of the corpse, or even on the floor. These ossuaries are almost exclusively made of limestone, roughly 40% of which are decorated with intricate geometrical patterns. Many ossuaries, plain or decorated, feature inscriptions identifying the deceased. These inscriptions are the chief scholarly source for identifying naming conventions in this region during this period.Among the best-known Jewish ossuaries of this period are: an ossuary inscribed 'Simon the Temple builder' in the collection of the Israel Museum; one inscribed 'Yehohanan ben Hagkol' that contained an iron nail in a heel bone suggesting crucifixion; another, (owned by André Lemaire), inscribed 'James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus', the authenticity of which has been debated by scholars; and ten ossuaries recovered from the Talpiot Tomb in 1980, several of which are reported to have names recorded in the New Testament.

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Related concepts (11)

Ossuary

Coffin

A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation. Coffins are sometimes referred to as a casket, particularly in American English. Any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewelry, use of the word "casket" in this sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker's trade.

Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus (: sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a coffin, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word sarcophagus comes from the Greek σάρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγεῖν phagein meaning "to eat"; hence sarcophagus means "flesh-eating", from the phrase lithos sarkophagos (λίθος σαρκοφάγος), "flesh-eating stone". The word also came to refer to a particular kind of limestone that was thought to rapidly facilitate the decomposition of the flesh of corpses contained within it due to the chemical properties of the limestone itself.