Baba Basra 6:7-8

Baba Basra 6:7

If a person has a public thoroughfare passing through his field, so he takes it for his own use and gives the public another route along the side, what he gave to the public becomes public property but he does not acquire what he took. The width of a private path is four cubits (about 6’) and that of a public thoroughfare is 16 cubits (about 24’). The king's highway has no prescribed limit, nor does the road to a cemetery. When it comes to the places where a funeral procession would pause, the judges of Sepphoris say it is area sufficient to plant four kav (50 cubits x 33.3 cubits, or about 75’x50’).

Baba Basra 6:8

If one person sells another a plot of land for a grave, and similarly, if one accepts a job to make a grave for someone else, he must makes the interior of the vault four cubits by six (about 6’x9’), which is subdivided into eight crypts – three on each of the two longer sides and two on the wall opposite the entrance. Each of these crypts is to be four cubits long by seven cubits tall by six cubits wide (approximately 6’x10.5’x9’). Rabbi Shimon says that the interior of the vault is six cubits by eight (about 9’x12’), subdivided into 13 crypts, as follows: four on each of the two longer sides, three on the wall opposite the entrance, and one on either side of the entrance. One makes a courtyard of six cubits by six (about 9’x9’) in front of the vault, large enough for the funeral bier and the pallbearers. This courtyard opens into two vaults, one on either side; Rabbi Shimon says it open to four vaults, one on each of its four sides. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says that the size and configuration of a vault depends on the hardness of the rock to be excavated (harder rock justifying smaller vaults with fewer crypts).