Why did Herod bury his architectural masterpiece and final resting place, and who discovered it?

Herzl has Herzliya, Montefiore has the Jerusalem neighborhood of Yemin Moshe, and Orde Wingate has the Yemin Orde youth village, near Haifa. Prophets and kings, both major and minor, have streets named for them all over Israel. Yet the only site explicitly commemorating Herod – builder of Caesarea, Banias, Jericho, Masada, and much of Jerusalem – is the conical hill where his funeral procession ended. He himself shaped the mound and dubbed it Herodium, but it stood forgotten and isolated for centuries.

Of course, it’s hardly surprising that no one wanted to live in a place named after this king of dubious descent who slew his wife and offspring, persecuted the sages, usurped the Hasmoneans, and ordered thousands executed on the day of his death just to make it cause for universal mourning rather than rejoicing. In short, not such a nice guy. Nonetheless, he certainly left his mark – and Israeli tourism is still reaping the benefits.

Herodium has richly rewarded the archaeologists who’ve devoted their lives to its exploration, most notably Prof. Ehud Netzer and his protégé, Dr. Roi Porat. Netzer discovered Herod upon joining the Masada excavation as a young architect under Yigael Yadin in the 1960s. The result was a lifelong romance with archaeology, annual digs at the monarch’s palaces in Jericho and at Herodium, and Netzer’s own conviction that if anyone could find Herod’s lost tomb, it would be he.

Many have searched Herodium for its fabled mausoleum. After all, how could you lose something so large it could be glimpsed all the way from Jerusalem? Excavations at the foot of the hill, where Herod’s funeral concluded, yielded a sumptuous bathhouse but no tomb. The hilltop palace seemed unlikely to house his final resting place, yet this complex too was investigated. An intricate water system was discovered, but again no grave.

Netzer’s intuition told him to look where Herod had made the most drastic alterations to his own handiwork. Excavating near the miniature Roman theater deliberately buried beneath debris (more on that later), he found a platform, then remnants of a graceful yet monumental structure smashed to bits, and finally three sarcophagi. Beside Herod’s not so final resting place (more on that later as well), Netzer too met his end. While directing the excavation of the mausoleum’s massive stones for transfer to the Israel Museum, he leaned on a faulty a handrail and fell a from a height of a few meters, sustaining injuries that resulted in his death. The museum’s subsequent exhibit on Herodian architecture also became a retrospective of Netzer’s life’s work.

Panorama of Herodium, showing the encircling walls, the triclinium and peristyle garden, and finally the eastern tower. The circular foundry at center is an eyesore postdating Herod | Photo: Eitan Ya’aran

Desert Oasis

Arid, isolated Herodium is an unlikely spot for a palace, unless you’re an insanely paranoid monarch who likes to spy on his guests well before their approach. Rising like a small volcano on the edge of the Judean Desert, the artificial hill commands an outstanding view on all sides but particularly north toward Jerusalem and east to where the Dead Sea glimmers below the foothills. At the base of Herodium, Herod built a colonnaded complex surrounding an artificial lake with a small island at its center. No matter that the water had to be channeled all the way from springs near Bethlehem. But the lake was just for the downstairs staff. The actual palace at the top of the hill rose seven stories – a veritable ancient skyscraper. And it was round. Everything up there was round – but built entirely of square, dressed stone. Herod loved a good architectural engineering challenge.

Approaching Herodium from Jerusalem, one would have been awed by the steep staircase cutting straight up the slope. At the palace’s most lavish stage, when Herod used the place to impress his distinguished international guests (see below), a series of arches crowned the top steps (the ones we climb today, unearthed by many seasons of painstaking digs). The arches offered a welcome respite from the blazing sun as Herod’s visitor stepped into the vestibule. There he or she would have marveled at the richly colored murals painted with the finest Italian pigments and preserved to this day beneath the dust of ages. Yet even as Herod built to last, his plans for Herodium were always changing, just like the king himself.