Memorial Use

A massebah was sometimes set up as a memorial to a person. Jacob’s placement of the pillar over Rachel’s grave in Gen 35:20 (compare 1 Sam 10:2), and Absalom’s pillar for himself in 2 Sam 18:18 are examples of this usage. In the latter case, Absalom was afraid no one would mark his grave because he had no living son to do it.

Thousands of these types of masseboth have been found from ancient Egypt, first-millennium Syria, and infrequently in Assyria and Babylon. In many of these ancient Near Eastern cases, there was also a cultic nuance associated with the memorial stone. The massebah marked the spot where the deceased was buried and where loved ones could offer votive offerings. This memorial idea can be seen in the Ugaritic account of The Tale of Aqhat (15th century bc). Aqhat pleads to the gods for a son because he has no one “to set up the stelae of his ancestral spirits” (ANET, 150). In this example, Avner suggests that the pillar was believed to “contain and preserve the ancestral spirit” (Avner, “Sacred Stones,” 33). Even today, Jewish grave markers are called masseboth, although this “ancestral spirit” connotation is no longer evident.