2 Francesca Stavrakopoulou people of Israel remove the defiling presence of “the corpses of their kings” which appear to be situated next to the temple (5). He contends that this alternative burial site is the Garden of Uzza, in which Manasseh and Amon are said to be buried in 2 Kgs 21,18.26. In the first of these verses, the Garden of Uzza appears to be equated with Manasseh’s palace garden (wtyb ˆg, “the garden of his house”). On this basis, Na’aman confidently identifies the Garden of Uzza with another garden mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the “King’s Garden” (˚lmh ˆg), to which brief references are found in 2 Kgs 25,4; Jer 39,4; 52,7 and Neh 3,15. This hypothesis is not only held to account for the change in the death and burial notices, but is also offered as an explanation for the absence of any referral to the burial place of Hezekiah, as the king was not buried “with his ancestors in the City of David”, but, according to this theory, in the new royal cemetery in the Garden of Uzza. Lest this disassociation from his Davidic ancestors diminish the favourable portrayal of Hezekiah, Na’aman suggests that the biblical author deliberately cut short his burial formula and ascribed the transfer of the royal burial place to Manasseh, a monarch portrayed in Kings as the most villainous of all the kings of Judah. This is not in itself an innovative proposal. Brian Schmidt reaches similar conclusions in his discussion of Ezek 43,7-9 (6), suggesting that a tradition underlying the burial notices in the books of Kings claimed that Hezekiah relocated the royal tombs in anticipation of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, fearing their desecration by the enemy. This tradition, he proposes, was altered by the biblical author in view of his contrasting assessments of Hezekiah and Manasseh, so that Manasseh was portrayed negatively as the instigator of the new burial site, and Hezekiah’s interment in the Garden of Uzza was a detail suppressed in the more positive account of his reign. Both Na’aman and Schmidt are right to recognize the ideological significance of the death and burial notices in the books of Kings. Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere that the location of Manasseh’s —————— with the removal of the Nehushtan from the temple (2 Kgs 18,4), as discussed in his article, “The Debated Historicity of Hezekiah’s Reform in the Light of Historical and Archaeological Research”, ZAW 107 (1995) 179-195. (5) The textual difficulties of Ezek 43,7-9 have given rise to a variety of interpretations, as indicated below. (6) Israel’s Beneficent Dead. Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition (FAT 11; Tübingen 1994; repr. Winona Lake, IN 1996) 250-254. Na’aman does not refer to Schmidt’s discussion.