Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. Solomon, informed of the disappearance of the master-builder, sent out fifteen Fellow Crafts to seek for him; five of these, having arrived at the mountain, noticed a place where the earth had been disturbed and there discovered the body of Hiram. Leaving a branch of acacia to mark the spot, they returned with their story to Solomon, who ordered them to go and exhume the body--an order that was immediately carried out.
The murder and exhumation, or "raising," of Hiram, accompanied by extraordinary lamentations, form the climax of Craft Masonry; and when it is remembered that in all probability no such, tragedy ever took place, that possibly no one known as Hiram Abiff ever existed, the whole story can only be regarded as the survival of some ancient cult relating not to an actual event, but to an esoteric doctrine. A legend and a ceremony of this kind is indeed to be found in many earlier mythologies; the story of the murder of Hiram had been foreshadowed by the Egyptian legend of the murder of Osiris and the quest for his body by Isis, whilst the lamentations around the tomb of Hiram had a counterpart in the mourning ceremonies for Osiris and Adonis--both, like Hiram, subsequently "raised"--and later on in that which took place around the catafalque of Manes, who, like Hiram, was barbarously put to death and is said to have been known to the Manicheans as "the son of the widow." But in the form given to it by Freemasonry the