Panoramic view looking down into Herod's palace/fortress
Here is a really nice idea – a tour of an archaeological site on the occasion of a friend’s birthday. Herodium is one of my favorite sites. Although it was hot and sunny, there was a cool breeze on the mountain top and you could really feel why Herod would have liked it.
When I guide Herodium I like to start in the Old City to show people the remains of the buildings at the Wohl museum and the stones of the walls and streets from the Herodion period along the western wall below Robinson’s Arch. Also, the Herodion stones in secondary usage in the tower at the Roman Gate are spectacular. This helps people know what to look for when we get to Herodium.
Last summer, I participated for a few days in the latest excavations that Ehud Netzer is leading on the eastern side of the mountain, excavating the tomb area. We were working on the pool and besides many pottery shards we found some catapult stones (size of snowballs, not to be confused with the larger ones rolled down from the walls by the Jewish rebels) and some coins from the Great Revolt.
Excavations are continuing and they’ve excavated a much larger area now. The base of the mausoleum is more exposed and it is very impressive. Additional stone architectural details of a very high quality can be seen (these are not of the local soft limestone but would have been quarried from Jerusalem and brought here). Netzer thinks that the base supported a nefesh or monument, circular in shape, something like Yad Avshalom in the Kidron Valley.
The latest findings are changing our understanding of Herodium. For example, it seems that the earth that was piled up around the mountain palace/fortress is not from the time of Herod but later. Originally, there was a glacis, a sloping wall, that circumvented the mountain.
Also, the archaeological evidence suggests that the staircase that is described by Josephus “and provided an easy ascent by two hundred steps of the purest white marble” was built later, that originally there was a “snake path” like at Masada. This leaves archaeologists with some interesting unanswered questions: When was it done, why and by whom?
I’ve uploaded additional photographs of Herodium to Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/27944012@N06/sets/72157615671440473/
Moish Oberman emailed me, asking this question:
Would it still have looked look like “a breast” if there was only a glacis at that time?
Herodium was built about 20BCE, Herod died 4BCE and Josephus only wrote about 100CE – by then the mountain had been covered by earth so Josephus described it as “rounded off in the shape of a breast” but like the stairs that Josephus described that Ehud Netzer says were added later, the earth hadn’t been piled up during Herod’s lifetime. Also, Netzer suggests that the model for the Herodium mountain top palace/fortress was the Antonia fortress. How does Josephus describe the Antonia:
By: Shmuel Browns on June 22, 2008
at 9:59 pm
[...] at the last minute. One couple was looking for a tour to Herodium, searched on Google and found my article and contacted me – we drove out the next morning, their last day in Israel. One fellow was flying [...]
By: Finding a guide at the last minute « Israel Tour Guide on November 24, 2008
at 8:15 pm
The tour of Herodium was awe-inspiring, largely because of Shmuel Browns, our guide. He is highly knowledgeable, and comes equipped with graphic documentation that fills the gaps of what one sees. He gave us a taste of the detective work of archaeologists. Further, Shmuel is very professional and a real “mensch”.
Paul and Brenda Breuer
By: Brenda and Paul Breuer on December 30, 2008
at 3:51 am