She converted to Judaism after witnessing the high moral character of Torah Jews. She used her riches to feed the poor. She became a nazirah to protect her youngest son. The remarkable story of Queen Helene of Adiabene.
Louis Felicien de Saulcy was searching for ancient coins. It was 1863 and the prominent French numismatist was excavating an area in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood not far from where the US consulate is situated today.
On the third day of the dig which required a permit from the Ottoman authorities one of the workers stepped on a tile in the floor of a structure. The tile moved revealing a hidden alcove beneath it.
When de Saulcy and his crew made their way inside the chamber they found something far more significant than ancient monies. There lay a beautiful sarcophagus weighing more than a ton about 1200 kilograms. A pair of inscriptions were written on the stone coffin — in Estrangelo (an old version of Syriac a dialect of Eastern Aramaic) and in Aramaic— that read “Tzeran Malka” and “Tzaddan Malkata.” Both mean Queen Sarah.
The formal “door” of the tomb the archeologists discovered was covered with a large rolling stone. Back in the first century the entrance was likely opened with a “secret mechanism” that involved water pressure and a system of weights.
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