The Eastern Roman Cemetery (The Askar Mausoleum)

Site description: The cemetery was discovered in 1971 AD while the Nablus Municipality was doing infrastructure work. The cemetery represents one of the most beautiful styles of Roman burials, which were allocated to the political and military elite, and the great merchants of that period in the tombs of the Mausoleum. It is noted that this cemetery excelled the western private cemetery in terms of the beauty of its architectural design, and the decoration of the stone coffins that form its facade, and it is still preserved in excellent condition. Since its discovery, this cemetery has received particular attention with protection works that included an iron structure surrounding it, and a roof cover.The general layout of the cemetery is based on two parts; the external part includes the beautiful facade of the graveyard and the entrance yard. The eternal part, the burial chamber, consists of one room.The external yard is rectangular in an east-west direction along the facade of the cemetery, its dimensions are 6.50 x 2 m, and it is white paved mosaics. It includes a well for collecting rainwater, intended to complete the funerary rituals to purify the dead. As for the facade of the cemetery, it was glorious in its engineering and decorations. The balcony was supported by four stone columns, topped with friezes carved in a gabled style that mimicked the appearance of the facades of temples. This was inferred from the many decorative stone pieces forming this facade. In the middle of it, it includes the entrance to the only burial hall; it is closed by a thick decorative stone door, which is still in its current location.The burial hall was carved out of natural rock with an internal area of 5 square meters; the floor is paved with white mosaics and consists of different levels corresponding to the distribution of coffins. The building of the walls was completed with trimmed limestone bearing the Roman style in construction. At the same time, the ceiling of this hall was achieved by adopting a system of intersecting arches to form the vaulted ceiling, and the four bases of the roof and parts of the walls are still in their original condition and have been plastered.The tomb includes ten stone coffins cut and carved out of limestone; all bear coverings of the same stone and have beautiful geometric, plant, and animal decorations and Greek inscriptions of the dead names dating back to the second century AD.