A team led by Philip Ebeling, Achim Lichtenberger and Oren Tal reviewed every known fourth- to second-century BCE cemetery in Israel, Jordan and coastal Syria. They discovered that the well-known kokhim, or side burial niches, actually began in Phoenicia during the Persian period—not in the royal cemeteries of early Alexandria as many books still say .
Early Phoenician examples
Rock-cut complexes beneath monuments at Sidon, Arwad and Burj al-Bezzak already have horizontal body niches blocked with stone slabs. Carved decoration and marble sarcophagi place them in the late fifth or early fourth century BCE—about one hundred years before Alexander founded Alexandria in 331 BCE . Similar family tombs show up soon after at Khirbat Za‛aquqa in the Shephelah and ‛Atlit on Mount Carmel, proving the style had spread south along the coast before Ptolemaic rule reached inland Judea .
Why was Alexandria blamed?
Large Alexandrian tombs, such as those at Shatby, display dozens of side niches around open courtyards, so early excavators assumed the fashion spread outward during Hellenistic times. The new survey notes that southern-Levant tombs lack those courtyards and instead follow local Phoenician shaft-and-chamber plans that gradually expanded into larger complexes . The authors suggest wealthy Phoenician families first roofed their burial shafts, then added stairways and linked rooms—steps that could be copied in nearby towns without any push from Egypt .
How people were buried
Across polytheistic (non-Jewish, non-Samaritan) communities from the Negev to Galilee, most adults were laid out flat in pits, cists or side-niche tombs. Cremation—common in Greece—was almost never used, showing a shared Levantine preference rather than an ethnic badge . Grave goods stayed modest: nearly every tomb, no matter its form, held at least one cheap item such as a small bowl, a perfume bottle (unguentarium) or a simple clay lamp. Storage jars and weapons, popular in earlier Persian-period graves, largely disappeared, marking a shift toward symbolic offerings .
What it means for history
If side-niche tombs began in Phoenicia, their later boom in inland cities like Maresha and Gerasa reflects local prosperity and family continuity instead of direct Egyptian influence. The authors argue that similar social needs—not royal fashion—can produce the same tomb design in several places. The southern Levant was already trying out new family burial layouts before Alexander arrived .
Next steps
Ebeling, Lichtenberger and Tal ask archaeologists to date the stone blocking slabs in the earliest Phoenician niche tombs and to sample the soil under those monuments for more precise timelines. If their findings hold, school texts on Hellenistic funerary art will need updating: the signature kokhim of later Jewish and Roman-period Judea may trace back to local Phoenician inventiveness rather than to Alexandrian glamour.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.