King of the Jews' Burial Site Found?

BY KEN ELLINGWOOD Los Angeles Times
Article Last Updated: 05/09/2007 12:09:48 AM CDT

JERUSALEM - For more than three decades, Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer scraped at the ancient man-made hillock. He searched the top. He dug at the bottom. Finally he carved into the midsection and there, he claims, found his prize: the grave of Herod the Great.

The evidence, in the form of shards of decorative stonework that may have been a coffin and pieces of a structure thought to have been the mausoleum, is still far from ironclad proof.
Archaeologists have not found a body. Nor is there any written confirmation yet that King Herod, who ruled with Roman backing 2,000 years ago, is buried in that spot.

But Netzer, a 72-year-old archaeologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Tuesday he had little doubt that the find is Herod's tomb. Herod built a palace at the site on a West Bank hill south of Jerusalem and is long believed to have prepared his own burial site on the cone-shaped mound.

Netzer said the discovery is the high point of decades of digging at the site. Additional digging is planned in order to find artifacts and more clues. "It's a great satisfaction. I'm not sure I myself have digested it fully," Netzer said during a news conference at Hebrew University that drew scores of Israeli and foreign journalists.

The discovery is important because Herod, elected "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate, "was one of the greatest builders that land has ever seen," said James Charlesworth, a professor of religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. "He was one of the most influential people in the Roman Empire - a friend of Anthony, a friend of Cleopatra."

Herod's projects included an expansion of the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70, decades after Herod's death. He was also the ruler who, according to the book of Matthew in the New Testament, ordered the slaying of all the infants in Bethlehem, forcing Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus to flee to Egypt.

"This is really quite a striking discovery," said James Strange, a professor of religion at the University of South Florida. "This is the very first king of Israel whose tomb we have ever found. We have some other candidates, but the tombs are all empty. If they really have kingly artifacts," then it will stand as a major discovery.

It is the 300-foot stone mound known as Herodium where Netzer devoted most of his energy since he began digging there in 1972. The flat-topped hill, about nine miles from Jerusalem, was built by Herod into a fortress palace with rounded lookout towers, baths, irrigated gardens and commanding views over a parched desert landscape.

Netzer and colleagues said the majesty with which the site was built strongly suggested the burial place of a king, rather than some other prominent person.
Eric Meyers, a professor of religion at Duke University said that "because of the context, it sounds like a royal tomb."

"I'm one of the most suspicious guys there is, but finding a tomb halfway up the side of Herodium is a pretty good indication that this is it," he said.
The researchers say the monument probably measured about 30 feet by 30 feet and was decorated with stone urns. The team has found "tons" of pieces from the structure, said Yaakov Kalman, an archaeologist on Netzer's team.

But the red-tinted limestone sarcophagus was smashed to pieces, most likely by ancient vandals, the archaeologists said. The researchers believe that some 70 years after Herod's death, Jewish rebels destroyed the tomb in an act of posthumous vengeance against him and the hated Roman rulers he represented. "He had a lot of enemies," Kalman said.

The archaeologists said it was unlikely the tomb held anyone other than Herod due to its apparent grandeur. Kalman said the workmanship was exquisite: stones fit tightly together without mortar to bind them.

"You cannot say for 100 percent until you find something written 'Herod,' " Kalman said. "But all the facts are showing that is the one."