Page 4 - Holyland Magazine - 2010 Edition

OF MONUMENTS AND MEN

The discovery of the magnificent tomb
of Herod the Great at Herodium is a good
reason to visit this imposing mountain
palace-fortress east of Jerusalem.

The artificial mount of Herodium still reigns imperiously over the landscape. Photos: Doron Nissim

We are deep in the belly of the We are well into our Herodium adventure, Over the years, untold scores of visitors
and yes, it’s all true. By the time we enter have climbed this mountain, not knowing
earth, feeling no bigger than mice in their the tunnels, we have heard the story of that the tomb lay right beneath their feet.
dens as we scurry through amazing artificial Herod the Great – told like it can be told We ascend the same route up the looming
tunnels. Did we really just huff and puff our nowhere else in the world, overlooking mound, but then we branch off, a small
way up an artificial mountain, seeing the the tomb of the murderous monarch sign pointing us downward, across the
entrance to the tomb of the region’s most himself. In the spring of 2007, a 35-year slope, until we see the gigantic, meticulously
feared man two millennia ago? Was it only search for this tomb by archaeologist Prof. carved blocks of gleaming limestone the
moments since we saw the monumental Ehud Netzer was finally crowned with local masons dubbed melekeh (“royal”).
entrance to the mountain, by which he success. Reporters flocked to the site and That’s the 30 x 30-foot podium of the
would access his palace, retinue in tow? the news echoed around the world – the tomb’s superstructure, which long ago
Less than an hour since we first spied this final resting place had been found of the disappeared.
mountain, its volcano-like silhouette man who had ordered the innocent children
towering over the Judean wilderness, east of Bethlehem killed (Matt. 2:16) and whose Now, we raise our heads, trying to imagine
of Jerusalem? And less than half an hour descendants struck fear into the hearts of the monument that once towered some 80
since we saw the Dead Sea sparkling in the inhabitants of Judah and Galilee (Matt. feet above this platform, its peaked roof
the sun and the Mountains of Moab to the 2:22; Luke 13:31). piercing the sky. And if the magnificent
east, and beloved Bethlehem to the west?

4 “All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps…” (Isaiah 14:11)