Oddity in descriptions

Idly reading THE TRAVELS OF BISHOP ARCULF IN THE HOLY LAND, one of the first things that struck his, and my, notice was the church of the Holy Sepulchre and the tomb of Jesus. Since he was there about AD 700, Hakim the Mad had not yet destroyed everything, and it was presumably in the same state it had been for hundreds of years, and the descriptions will be very different from what you would see today.

All the tomb pictures show something about as tall as a man's shoulders, but Alculf's description is a bit different.

Within, on the north side, is the tomb of our Lord, hewn out of the same rock, seven feet in length, and rising three palms above the floor. These measurements were taken by Arculf with his own hand. This tomb is broad enough to hold one man lying on his back, and has a raised division in the stone to separate his legs. The entrance is on the south side, and there are twelve lamps burning day and night, according to the number of the twelve apostles; four within at the foot, and the other eight above, on the right-hand side. Internally, the stone of the rock remains in its original state, and still exhibits the marks of the workman's tools; its colour is not uniform, but appears to be a mixture of white and red. The stone that was laid at the entrance to the monument is now broken in two; the lesser portion standing as a square altar, before the entrance, while the greater forms another square altar in the east part of the same church, covered with linen cloths.

Matthew doesn't describe it; just calls it a tomb. Mark implies that the tomb was big enough to enter; so do Luke and John. Mark used a different Greek word, that seems to include monument as a connotation. So not much there, except that it sounds rather more like the pictures than what Arculf describes.

But chiseling out rock isn't easy or cheap, even the kind of mediocre stone in that outcrop. Why waste effort? Maybe what Alculf was describing was more of a family burial area, with niches carved for the individual tombs. That seems more practical, and explains why the tomb is described as "broad enough to hold one man".

I don't get the "raised division in the stone to separate his legs" bit though. I can't think of a good reason to wrap the legs separately, and a good one not to (easier to carry the body). The shroud of Turin certainly has them tight together.

I am disinclined to believe that what he saw was the Lord's cup, or the place where His last footprints are to be seen in the dust, or that there was a 700-year-old fig tree from which Judas hanged himself. But I'd think the tomb location might have been remembered a while, and the identification stands a chance of being accurate. Maybe it wasn't quite finished? Or quite smooth, and he misinterpreted... I trust his observations, but not the interpretations.

FWIW, the translation in Project Gutenberg omits things like "relating a miracle concerning the sudarium or napkin taken from the head of our Saviour (which has not been[xiii] thought worth retaining in the present translation)."

On Mount Sion, Arculf saw a square church, which included the site of our Lord's Supper, the place where the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles, the marble column to which our Lord was bound when he was scourged, and the spot where the Virgin Mary died. Here also is shown the site of the martyrdom of St. Stephen.

Three sites so close together (plus a pillar taken from elsewhere)? I know Israel is small, but that's quite a stretch.

By all means, read the report. There are others at the link too