- Contains a body
The purpose of a tomb is to contain and preserve the body of an important person.
There’s an old joke: “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” The average listener will say, “Grant”. Then you can say, “Wrong! No one is buried in Grant’s Tomb! No one is buried in ANY tomb. They are entombed!” If you want to get pedantic about it, and show off (and that sure describes Dave, most of the time!) You can add, “In fact, there are TWO people entombed in Grant’s Tomb: Ulysses S Grant AND his wife!”; (but it won’t win you any popularity contests.)
Here’s Mr. & Mrs. Grant, resting comfortably in Grant’s Tomb:
Here’s Tutankhamun (aka ‘King Tut’) in his tomb:
And here are the twin tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal (“Jewel of the Palace”) inside the Taj Mahal. But their bodies aren’t actually in these tombs. They are actually entombed in a private room directly underneath them, but still inside the Taj Mahal.
If a building never contained a body we shouldn’t call it a ‘Tomb’, do you think? As far as we know, no one ever found a body in the Great Pyramid.