Archaeologists find 2000-year-old tomb in Israel: believed to be burial place of "Christ's midwife"

The so-called Tomb of Solomon, located 50 kilometers from Jerusalem, was discovered 40 years ago. Specialists from the Israeli Solomiya Tomb Authority have recently finished exploring it, although excavations began in 1984.

This is reported by FriendSofia.

More than two thousand years ago, this cave was the tomb of a wealthy Jewish family. It consists of separate chambers with funeral niches carved into the walls. Probably, the burial site was plundered in ancient times, because traces of looting are visible: ossuaries (stone boxes) were broken and skeletons were thrown from their places.

According to archaeologists, the tomb belonged to a family that had a high status during the Second Temple period (516-70 BC). But later, scientists discovered, in addition to ancient Jewish burials, traces of the presence of people from the early Byzantine period, approximately the fifth century and later.

At that time, Christian pilgrims began to visit the cave: hundreds of clay oil lamps were found there, which are associated with the pilgrims.

Also, the walls of the cave are covered with inscriptions left by believers. Thanks to them, we can understand that the cave was visited by people from Byzantium, Syria, Cappadocia, etc.

According to the inscriptions, pilgrims believed this cave to be the burial place of Solomia, the midwife who was at the birth of Christ. Nowadays, almost nothing is known about this woman to Western Christians, but she was revered by early Christians and is depicted as the midwife of Jesus in many Orthodox icons.

The problem is that the story of the midwife Solomia is told in the Gospel of James, an apocryphon whose authenticity is questionable.

It says that Solomia was an assistant to another midwife who was invited to deliver Mary's baby. But when she found out that a virgin was going to give birth, she doubted it, and paid the price for that - her hand dried up. Therefore, Solomia had to deliver the baby, as she did not doubt the virginity of Christ's mother. However, the hand of the older midwife was healed after she touched the cradle of the newborn child.

Read also: Archaeologists found 25 strange Stone Age pits in England (photo)

"Solomiya is a very mysterious figure," the researchers said in a statement. "The cult of Solomiya is undoubtedly Christian, and it belongs to a broader phenomenon when early Christian pilgrims encountered Jewish sites and sanctified them in their own way.

That is, Christians incorporated ancient Jewish tombs into their religion, and to make these places popular, they announced that a saint or a hero of the Apocrypha was buried there.

Archaeologists believe that the name "Solomia" could have been carved on one of the ossuaries. It could have been seen by a Christian who was reading the Gospel of James and reported that he had found the grave of a midwife holding the infant Christ. This information was enough for pilgrims to start visiting the cave.

As a reminder, giant stone axes 300,000 years old were unearthed in Britain.

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