The name given to a monument found today among the many Jewish tombs in the Kidron Valley.
The structure has nothing to do with Absalom, the son of David. The origin of the structure is probably 1st Cent BC. Cut out of solid rock cliff (its top is masonry), it served as a nephesh, a funerary memorial for the catacombs behind it. It received its name from Benjamin of Tuleda, a Christian pilgrim who came to Jerusalem in the 12th Cent and remembered that "in his lifetime Absalom had taken a pillar and erected it in the King's Valley as a monument to himself, for he thought, 'I have no son to carry on the memory of my name.' He named the pillar after himself, and it is called Absalom's Monument to this day" (2 Sam 18:18).
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