
The image is a photograph of a plaque on a wall with Hebrew text. The plaque is titled "The people of the Chalcothic Period believed in the afterlife and devoted tremendous resources to the cult of the dead. They also believed in one's ancestors became a means of guaranteeing their protection and patronage. For the first time in human history, cemeteries were situated outside settlements. At the same time, the practice of secondary burial emerged, in which the bones of the deceased were collected after the flesh had decomposed or been eaten by birds of prey. At a cemetery of Shigimim in the northern Negev, the bones were gathered into round structures. The most common practice by far, however, was to place the bones in pottery receptacles called ossuary and bury them in caves dug especially for this purpose. Some ossuaries bear realistic or abstract human likenesses. These images appear to represent the deceased and expressed the strong connection between the living and the dead."
