Tombs and burial caves were a prominent feature of the open landscape around Jerusalem in antiquity. In the course of the centuries, the slopes of the hills and valleys around the city became extensive burial grounds, consisting of tombs and burial caves of diverse types. Archaeological excavations have provided rich information about burial in Jerusalem and its environs during the First and Second Temple periods.

Our knowledge of tombs in Jerusalem and its vicinity for the four-and-a-half centuries from the end of the First Temple period to the Early Roman period is extremely fragmentary. Some Jewish burial caves from the First Temple period continued to be used in the Persian period (586-332 BCE). Only a few tombs from the early Hellenistic period (4th-2nd centuries BCE) are known. The finds from the late Second Temple period, ending in the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, shed light on burial customs. More than a thousand rock-cut burial caves of this period have been unscovered around the Old City, as well as in the precincts of the Dominus Flevit Church on the Mount of Olives, on Mount Scopus, and in the modern neighborhoods of Giv'at Shapira (French Hill), Giv'at ha-Mivtar, Ramot Eshkol and Sanhedriyya. Some of the most imposing tombs of the period have been preserved in the hard limestone cliffs along the Valley of Hinnom and the Kidron Valley. Occasionally, a nefesh (Hebrew for 'soul'), consisting of a small building or just a single stone, visibly marked the place of a tomb or grave and commemorated the person/s buried there.

The Jewish custom of a two-stage burial was maintained in this period as well. A typical family tomb contained one or more chambers; hewn into the walls of the chambers were loculi � elongated niches, averaging 0.5 x 0.5 x 2.0 m. At first, the body of the deceased was placed in a loculus for one year, in the course of which the flesh decayed. At the end of the year the bones were collected in an ossuary or in the loculi, or stored in an inner chamber. The ossuaries were often decorated on the outside with carved geometric patterns, most common of which were rosettes. Other motifs were various architectural elements, sometimes imitations of contemporary monumental tombs in Jerusalem. Frequently, relatives incised the deceased's name on the ossuary. The use of ossuaries was common in the Jerusalem area from the second half of the first century BCE until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The prevalence of this custom is often associated with the development of Jewish belief in personal resurrection of the dead, which made it necessary to separate the bones of each person.