Miqwa'ot in the necropolis of Beth She'arim

Three stepped water installations were discovered within the grounds of the Beth She'arim necropolis during excavations in the 1940s and 1950s, directed by Benjamin Mazar and Nahman Avigad. A reexamination of these installations has revealed that they served as ancient ritual baths (miqwa'ot), which functioned as an integral part of the third-fourth-century CE Jewish cemetery. This reevaluation was aided by an inspection of the plans of the original excavations, published here for the first time. The practice of situating ritual baths adjacent to tombs, which prima facie would appear to run counter to standard halakhic norms, is, in fact, well grounded in the halakhic tradition reflected in the Talmudic literature.