A Neighborhood of Tombs: Architectural and Literary Topoi in Late Antique Rabbinic Culture

Apart from testifying to the rich and multilayered structure of towns in late antique Palestine, in which the dead were often assigned a place on the threshold of the living city, the passage from Midrash Psalms is significant for the mechanism of spatial representation it reveals. The ability to anticipate the appearance of the city in its entirety upon seeing one of its parts, owes partly to the obvious familiarity of the speaker with the common Graeco-Roman urban model and the roadside place it designated for cemeteries. Nevertheless, the principle according to which the whole is represented in its parts is also inherent in the very nature of this model. Particularly in the cities of the Roman era in Palestine, various elements comprising the town echoed its overall structure.