Israeli finding may offer insights on Herod

HERODIUM, West Bank — Under a baking sun, pieces of limestone carved with borders of rosettes and geometrical designs lay in three excavated pits Tuesday — a desert site Israeli archaeologists say is the tomb of King Herod, who ruled the Holy Land when Christ was born.

The find, which could provide insights into one of the Bible's most reviled yet influential figures, includes hundreds of pieces of an ornate sarcophagus but no bones and no inscription that would seal the identification.

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 H. 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.

Although the tomb was shattered and empty, leaders of the Israeli team that unearthed it said Tuesday they will dig on in the hope of finding jewelry, other artifacts or even the biblical monarch's remains.

Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer said he has been leading the search for Herod's tomb at the king's winter palace in the Judean desert, in an Israeli-controlled part of the West Bank south of Jerusalem, for 35 years.

Last month, his team started unearthing limestone fragments, from which emerged the picture of an ornately carved sarcophagus with decorative urns of a type never before found in the Holy Land.

"It's a sarcophagus we don't just see anywhere," Netzer told reporters at the university. "It is something very special."

The complete sarcophagus would have been about nine feet long, the university said.

Herod was the Jewish proxy ruler of the Holy Land under imperial Roman occupation from 37 B.C. His most famous construction project was expanding the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Remnants of his extensive building work in Jerusalem are still visible in Jerusalem's Old City, and he undertook major construction projects in Caesaria, Jericho, the hilltop fortress of Masada and elsewhere.