Tombs

This summer at Dearly Departed Tours, business has never been better -- and that was before Michael Jackson's sudden death. In the days since, the company that drives tour buses to spots where celebrities have met their end has added a stop at the rented Holmby Hills mansion where the pop star collapsed. People are so fascinated with Hollywood's history of death and crime that Dearly Departed has added 100 tours a month compared with a year ago, said owner Scott Michaels.

James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul" who died on Christmas Day, was entombed during a private family ceremony presided over by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the minister's office said. Brown, who died in Atlanta at 73, was laid to rest in a crypt in Beech Island, S.C., pending the completion of a public mausoleum in an as-yet undisclosed location. Brown's children, close friends and other family members were with Sharpton and other clergy for the noon interment.

Instead of being buried 6 feet under, local Catholics can now spend eternity above ground in granite-clad crypts. Latching onto a national trend, Catholic cemeteries in Southern California have embarked on a mausoleum-building binge. On Wednesday at Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange dedicated a 4,000-space crypt center, the first of at least six mausoleums planned for Orange County's three Catholic graveyards.

Will the mausoleum last an eternity? Built with poured-in-place concrete and steel rods, Ascension Cemetery's Guardian Angel Mausoleum is designed to stand for ages, said Michael Wesner, director of cemeteries for the Diocese of Orange. He likened the structure's longevity to centuries-old European mausoleums and the Taj Mahal, India's famous marble mausoleum, which was completed in 1648.

Archeologists from Hebrew University say they have found the tomb of Herod the Great, the Roman client-king of Judea, after a 35-year search at the desert site where his palace once stood. Herod, who expanded the Judean empire from Palestine to parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, is known in the New Testament as the ruler who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, the slaughter of boys in Jerusalem that caused Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus to flee to Egypt.

THE rooms in this college dorm have no electricity, no running water and ceilings that are just 11 inches high. But the residents don't mind. They're dead. Draped in sky-blue marble, the honeycombed structure -- which is tucked behind a set of spooky glowing stones at Chapman University in Orange -- is designed to house the cremated ashes of alumni, faculty and pets. The mini-cemetery is part of a small but growing trend on college campuses.

Chinese researchers say they have found a strange pyramid-shape chamber while surveying the huge underground tomb of China's first emperor. Remote sensing equipment has revealed what appears to be a 100-foot-high room above Emperor Qin Shihuang's tomb near the ancient capital of Xi'an in Shaanxi province, the state-run New China News Agency reported this week. The room has not been excavated.

Nikita Muchnik, a student who sells cellphones at a department store near the Kremlin, doesn't much care whether the embalmed body of Vladimir I. Lenin stays in its airtight glass coffin in Red Square or is banished from its place of honor. In his mind, the Soviet founder has already sunk to the level of a cynically exploited tourist attraction, a kind of real-life Madame Tussaud wax figure.

A suspected tomb raider who turned police informant has led archeologists to what experts described Friday as the oldest known frescoed burial chamber in Europe. Some experts say it houses the oldest paintings in the history of Western civilization. The tomb, in a hilly barley field north of Rome, belonged to a warrior prince from the nearby Etruscan town of Veio, said archeologists who took journalists on a tour of the site. Dating from 700-680 B.C.

The arrest of tomb robbers led archeologists to the graves of three royal dentists, hidden in the desert sands for thousands of years in the shadow of Egypt's most ancient pyramid, officials said. The thieves launched their own dig two months ago but were caught, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters.