Archeologist Ehud Netzer is head of the team from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University which uncovered the site at the king’s winter palace in the Judean desert last year. He says the latest finds truly show work and funding fit for a king

 

“I sit on the remains of a mausoleum of Herod. We haven’t really fell close the foundations. But we’ve found here, and some of them are spread all around, architectural fragments that enable us to restore a monument of 25-meter high, 75-feet high, a very elegant, it’s, which fits Herod’s taste and his status. ”

 

A depiction of Herod’s monument is seen in this animation from the National Geographic Channel Special Herod’s Lost Tomb, premiering Sunday Nov. 23rd. In Herod’s private box of the auditorium the diggers discover delicate frescoes, depicting windows opening on to painted landscapes. One of the scenes appears to show the view of a southern Italian farm.

 

Just visible in the paintings dating from between 15-10 B.C. are a dog, bushes and what looks like a country villa. Netzer said that since finding fragments of one ornately carved sarcophagus last year, he and his team have found two more, suggesting that the monumental tomb may have been a royal family vault.

 

“The mausoleum like the one which we have here, was generated by a king but not in particular only for himself, many times for his children and family like the famous mausoleum of Augustus in Rome, of Hadrian in Rome. They may contain many family members.”

 

Herod was the Jewish proxy ruler of the holy land under imperial Roman occupation beginning in 37B.C. and he reigned for more than six decades. After Herod’s death, Herodium, Herod’s sprawling palace fortress became a stronghold for Jewish rebels fighting Roman occupation and the site suffered significant battle damage before it was conquered and finally destroyed by Roman forces in 71 A.D.

 

The insurgents reviled the memory of Herod as a Roman puppet, and Netzer and his team believe that the violence with which one of the stone caskets was smashed suggests they knew it held his bones.

 

No human remains or inscriptions proving conclusively that the tomb was the king’s have been found,but excavation work continues.