Herod built himself an artificial mountain — a fortress-palace he named after himself and, Josephus says, chose for his burial. Excavations laid bare the palace, and in 2007 uncovered the remains of his mausoleum on the slope. It is the monument of the very king Matthew's nativity presents as a paranoid tyrant: concrete confirmation of Herod the builder, even if it says nothing about the story of the magi.
- What it is
- A cone-shaped desert palace-fortress with a round citadel, a lower palace and pool, and a monumental tomb building on its slope
- Date of artifact
- built c. 23 BC
- Discovered
- Herodium, about 12 km south of Jerusalem (Ehud Netzer's excavations (the tomb identified in 2007))
- Where it is now
- Herodium National Park
- Related to
- Herod the Great, the king of the nativity narrative
- Scripture
- Matthew 2:1–19
What this find showsThe historical Herod of the nativity as a real, monumental builder-king, buried here as Josephus records.
What it does not proveNothing here attests the massacre of the infants or any detail of the nativity itself.
Sources & further reading