Keeping along the road, we see before reaching the Tombs of the Judges, numbers of tombs dispersed about the ground on our right hand, some partly destroyed, some converted into cisterns, and others still uninjured. All this land was a large field of the dead, where the ancient Jews excavated sepulchres suitable to their wealth and station. One among them is remarkable as giving us a correct idea of that in which our Lord was laid; for it consists of an antechamber, and a burial chamber, in which is a single niche to receive a corpse, on the right hand of the entrance[844]. A few yards further on, we come, after turning to the right, to the Tombs of the Judges[845], called by the Arabs _Kubur el-Godka_. There does not appear to be any reason for the name. Eight of the fifteen Judges who ruled the people between the death of Joshua and the accession of Saul were certainly buried elsewhere: and it is far more likely that the rest would sleep with their fathers among their own tribes, after the usual custom of the Israelites. It seems to me much more probable that certain members of the Sanhedrim were buried here, according to the traditional belief of the Jews now in Jerusalem, who visit this spot from no other motive than curiosity. The exterior of the vestibule is decorated with a frontispiece resembling that in the Tomb of Jehoshaphat, consisting of a cornice and pediment, the tympanum of which is richly carved with palm-leaves and foliage, with three acroteria, perhaps intended for funeral emblems (torches), one on the summit (effaced), and the other two at each end. Under the cornice is a row of small modillons. Beneath the cornice, and on each side of the opening, runs an ornamental group of mouldings. A low narrow door similarly decorated is placed in the middle of the vestibule, and gives admission to the sepulchral chambers, six in number, and containing altogether sixty-three biers. Sixty of these are narrow casemate vaults, of the class which M. de Saulcy considers as incomplete receptacles, and three are sepulchral niches. The execution displayed in these tombs is not inferior to that at the Tombs of the Kings, nor do they yield to them in elegance or arrangement, especially in the interior. At the south-west corner of the first chamber is a narrow staircase, which I found blocked up with enormous stones, fitted together in order to close the entrance. After removing them with no small trouble I understood the reason why they were so placed. In the entrance below lay a corpse, not yet reduced to a skeleton; the head and right hand of which had been severed from the body; signs of a cruel vengeance, of which I discovered other instances in my researches in the country. This unfinished sepulchral chamber fully supplies us with the means of studying the construction of these receptacles of the dead. In it are the beginnings of nine casemate vaults, and the instruments used have evidently been the chisel and the revolving cutter which I have already described[846]. The limestone from which the whole of the monument is hewn resembles in quality that at the Tombs of the Kings; but it is of a yellowish colour veined with red, and takes a polish like marble. It is easily quarried at first, but becomes hard when exposed to the atmosphere.