<P> In Christianity, the empty tomb is the tomb of Jesus that was found to be empty by the women myrrhbearers who had come to his tomb to carry out their last devotions to Jesus' body by anointing his body with spices and by pouring oils over it . </P> <P> All four canonical gospels report the incident with some variations . Jesus' body was laid out in the tomb after crucifixion and death . All the gospels report that women were the first to discover the Resurrection of Jesus . The first hint that something had happened was the rolled - away stone . This stone, as was typical of ancient tombs, had covered the entrance . They found the tomb to be empty, the body gone, and a young man or angel (s) within the tomb or on the rolled - away stone tells the women that Jesus has risen . These accounts, along with many Resurrection appearances of Jesus, lead to beliefs concerning the Resurrection of Jesus . The empty tomb points to the revelation of Jesus' resurrection, implicitly in the canonical Gospel of Mark (without the later endings) and explicitly in the other three canonical gospel narratives . </P> <P> For many people of antiquity, empty tombs were seen as signs not of resurrection but of assumption, that is, the person being taken bodily into the divine realm . In Chariton's ancient Greek novel Callirhoe, the hero Chaereas finds his wife's tomb empty and immediately assumes the gods took her rather than believe she was resurrected or that her body was stolen by grave - robbers . In Ancient Greek thinking, the connection between postmortem disappearance and apotheosis was strong and there are numerous examples of individuals conspiring, before their deaths, to have their remains hidden in order to promote their postmortem venerations . Arrian wrote of Alexander the Great planning his own bodily disappearance so that he would be revered as a god . Disappearances of individuals to be taken in the divine realm also occur in Jewish literature, although they do not involve an empty tomb . Daniel Smith suggests the empty tomb stories and resurrection appearances in the gospels come from separate traditions, with the former about Jesus' absence or assumption, while the latter were about Jesus' presence . He concludes that the gospel writers took the two traditions and weaved them together . </P>

Who went to the tomb and found it empty