The gospels are quite specific. The tomb of Jesus was blocked by a stone (λίθος, lapis), which had to be rolled in place (προκυλί-, advolv-), and rolled away (ἀποκυλι-, revolv-). The roots of those words, κυλι- and volv-, wherever they occur definitely implies some kind of circular movement.
So why, in almost every single interpretation of that tomb in art, right up until the nineteenth century, is there no suggestion of anything rolling at all? Christ emerges from a box-like rectangular sepulchre, whose rectangular lid, if it appears at all, has been slid to one side, or toppled off. It is not round, and it has not rolled. The nearest one gets to any kind of rotation is that it is often swivelled as it is slid, and of course it turns from horizontal to vertical as it topples, but in no language can either of these movements be termed “rolling” without considerable terminological inexactitude. Furthermore, although some architectural elements often frame the picture, the sepulchre is rarely seen inside anything, such as a mausoleum, temple or excavated cave; more often than not, if there is any indication of its location, it is simply outside in the open air, like a wealthy tomb in a nineteenth century graveyard, although it is never accompanied by any others.
Some typical medieval “empty tombs.” Note the skewed lid in the first four images.
Medieval artists owed little to archaeology, and, surprisingly, little to biblical reference. Their pictographic ideas stemmed from an individual blend of iconographic tradition, the artistic fashions of the day, liturgical practice and pilgrims’ accounts of Jerusalem.
Although alternative sites, especially the so-called ‘Garden Tomb,’ are sometimes suggested, the overwhelmingly understood site of the tomb of Christ is the traditional Holy Sepulchre, now enclosed in a vast ecclesiastical complex, which also includes the site of the Crucifixion. If the sepulchre itself was originally carved out of a natural limestone wall, perhaps of an old quarry, there is nothing left of its surrounds, which were reduced to a thin shell by Constantine the Great and completely enclosed within a vast circula rotunda. Damaged to a greater or lesser extent by successive earthquakes, the edifice was rebuilt or restored several times, and became a series of concentric cloisters, with the sepulchre itself encapsulated in the middle. Eventually this central enclosure became the Aedicule, whose circular floorpan was compromised by a big square antechamber in front. The original limestone shelf was completely enclosed in marble, although famously there were three holes in the slab across the front of the tomb, through which pilgrims could still make physical contact with the actual rock upon which Jesus had been laid. Throughout all this, there is no mention, ever, of the stone which might originally have been used to seal the tomb.
The Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner thinks that it probably wasn’t round anyway. His book, The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period, details over 900 tombs from the Second Temple period – before its destruction in 70AD – of which only 4 were sealed with round stones, huge wheels over 1.20 metres across and weighing up to three quarters of a tonne. Three were undoubtedly for royalty, for the family of King Herod and for Queen Helena of Adiabene. It seems unlikely that Jesus was buried in such a fashion, even if Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were very wealthy. The vast majority of the discovered tombs were sealed with roughly carved sub-rectangular plugs, narrower to fit the doorway and wider outside it.
Kloner also says that round blocking stones became much more common after the Roman destruction of the city, and it may be that the evangelists assumed that Jesus was buried in the style they themselves had experience of. Alternatively, the ‘rolling stone’ could be a metaphorical reference to the kingship of Christ. Interestingly the Gospel of John does not use a word based on κυλι-, he uses ἠρμένονd, which means “picked up and taken away.” Some people think this indicates that John was more familiar with Jesus’s burial details than the other evengelists, but taken with other discrepancies from the synoptics, it is more likely that he was writing of practice in late first or early second century Antioch or somewhere similar, wherever this gospel was composed.
In earlier papers I have discussed the evolution of the iconography of the Three Marys, and that theme, coupled to those of the Resurrection, the appearance to Mary Magdalene, and later, the Lamentation and the Deposition, all carry with them the tomb itself. The earliest depictions are on ivory plaques from early fifth century Rome, and already we are a long way from the gospels.
These plaques may have been associated with pilgrimage, either actual or virtual, and as such, their tombs were images of what a pilgrim might actually see in Jerusalem, rather than interpretations of scripture. The rotunda and aedicule had completely replaced the outside of the cave cut into the hillside, and, apparently, the latter had massive rectangular doors. Even now it is not clear when the aedicule was given its cupola, and the circular turret on these early representations of the Holy Sepulchre may actually represent the rotunda encircling it. As for what could be found inside – for a long time, it seems, few people knew. Mostly they seem to have guessed, not a shelf, but a boxlike sarcophagus.
Although these early depictions may not have intended to illustrate the gospel stories as much as the current appearance of the site, they seem to have established an iconography that continued to be followed long after the association with any kind of pilgrimage had faded. Followed, and developed, for soon the box inside the aedicule became a more important element than the aedicule itself, which dwindles into the background before disappearing altogether.
Colin Morris, in his monumental work, The Sepulchre of Christ in the Medieval West, distinguishes between attempts to replicate the actual building of the sepulchre in western churches, and the sarcophagi of illustrations and the Quem Quaeritis rite performed at Easter. “We can find,” he says, “two different traditions existing side by side: the Jerusalem Sepulchre as it existed, and the coffins/ tombs that bore no similarity to it. The one thing we do not find is authentic history: attempts to portray the Sepulchre as it was described in the Gospels were very rare indeed.”
Quite so. But why?