tombology

English

Etymology

From tomb +‎ -ology.

Noun

tombology (uncountable)

1. The study of tombs.
   • 1863, B[ourchier] W[rey] Savile, “The End of Man. […]”, in Man; or, The Old and New Philosophy: […], London: Hurst and Blackett, […], pages 261, 279, and 286:

     The earliest authentic instance of tombology we have been enabled to discover is an inscription completely at variance with all our modern ideas of grave-yard poetry. […] The melon disease, however, is not the only one which has the honour of a place in the archives of tombology. […] At Pewsey (from which parish we believe an eminent divine of the present day takes his honoured name)—or Pusey, as some spell it—in Wiltshire, we meet with a most singular combination in the annals of tombology, wherein not only the virtues and the failings, the talents and the artistic skill, of the deceased are stated with more than usual freedom, but her relationship to a distinguished Irish statesman, and also to a certain Lady Jones, appear to be introduced as a sort of guarantee for her happiness in the world to come:— […]

   • 1868, “A Clergyman” [William Mackenzie], “Note II.—Works on the Great Pyramid.”, in The Pyramid and the Bible, the Rectitude of the One in Accordance with the Truth of the Other, Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, page 93:

     (2.) Dr. Lepsius, in his Letters from Egypt, and also in the numerous volumes of folio plates of his Denkmaeler—deeply learned in hieroglyphic Egyptology and tombology.

   • 1995, Asian Bulletin, page 6, column 1:

     There is an even more pronounced political purpose in the tombology of King Tongmyong, regarded as “the ancestral father” of the Koguryo dynasty which flourished around here some 1,500 years ago.