252 Nadav Na’aman in the Bible (e.g., Num 19,14-19) are late and irrelevant for the discussion, but Ezekiel’s words reflect a late First Temple priestly opposition to the practice of burial within the palace. It is worth noting that all the 130 tombs excavated so far in Jerusalem and dated to the eighth to early sixth centuries BCE are located outside the city, and their distribution matches exactly the outer confines of its walls (40). The location of the tombs outside the city is due to the search for a suitable place for hewing or excavating tombs, but might also have been motivated by a sense of the impurity attached to graves. Be that as it may, the burial of the royal tombs within the city was exceptional. Jeremias suggested that Ezekiel’s words refer to the garden of Uzza, where Manasseh and Amon were buried, and that the garden must be sought in the royal acropolis, between the palace and the temple (41). He suggested locating the tombs of the earlier kings of Judah in the southeastern part of the City of David, at the site where Weill found the hewn installations mentioned above. In my opinion, the exact opposite is true. Until the time of Hezekiah the kings of the House of David were buried in the palace, or near it, in accordance with the practice common to many ancient Near Eastern kingdoms. Under Hezekiah the burial place was transferred to a new site outside the walls of Jerusalem, and he was the first to be buried there. Yet the tombs of the early kings of Judah remained in the palace, and Ezekiel’s words echo the criticism of the priests of the impurity that ‘the corpses of their kings’ brought into YHWH’S temple. The omission of the burial place in the case of Hezekiah (2 Kgs 20,21) can now be satisfactorily explained. The death formula of the early Judahite kings (‘and so-and-so slept with his ancestors and was buried with his ancestors in the city of David’), which combined the continuity of the dynasty with the burial place, did not fit the burial in a new site. Hezekiah is portrayed favourably in the Book of Kings, with such a superlative as ‘there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those before him’ (2 Kgs 18,5). Presenting him as a king who was not buried with his ancestors might have spoiled this positive description. For this reason the author cut short his burial formula and ascribed the transfer of the burial place to a new site (the garden of Uzza) to Manasseh, the arch-sinner among all the kings of Judah. The location of the new burial place outside the walls of Jerusalem also explains the absence of a burial formula in the description of Jehoiakim. This ruler died during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem and could not have been buried with his ancestors outside the walls of Jerusalem. He must have been —————— E. TOV) (Winona Lake 1992) 381-401, with earlier literature; H. NIEHR, “Zum Totenkult der Könige von Sam’al im 9. und 8. Jh. V. Chr.”, Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici sul Vicino Oriente Antico 11 (1994) 57-73. (40) G. BARKAY, Northern and Western Jerusalem at the End of the Iron Age (Ph.D. Dissertation; Tel Aviv University 1985) (Hebrew); ID., “Necropolis of Jerusalem”, 233- 270, with earlier literature. For a comprehensive picture of the burial caves discovered so far in the Kingdom of Judah, see I. YEZERSKI, “Burial-Cave Distribution and the Borders of the Kingdom of Judah toward the End of the Iron Age”, Tel Aviv 26 (1999) 253-270, with earlier literature. (41) JEREMIAS, Heiligengräber, 53-56.