The Columbarium

It is an interesting and a perplexing monument, yet it is still unexplained completely it is called The Columbarium. In Latin a columbarium means a pigeon house or dove cote, but any pigeon trying to perch here would quickly end up with a very stiff neck. It is a place with tiers of niches for the reception of cinerary urns.

The niches, about 25 centimeters square, which cover every inch of the inner chamber and most of the walls of the recessed front, are not really big enough, being only about ten inches square, to hold funerary urns and so it is extremely doubtful that this was the purpose of this particular monument.

The back of each niche slopes down inwards so that no tall object, like an urn, could stand on the rather narrow ledge. The whole arrangement looks like a post office sorting grid except that the niches have no depth to them.

Beside the two explanations of the Columbarium mentioned above, Dr Hammond proposes a third one, that this was a standard Nabataean
tomb with an inner burial chamber, but was simply decorated to look like a Columbarium without actually serving as one.