Jerusalem: The Biography

* Herod’s tomb was discovered in 2007 by Professor Ehud Netzer who found an ornate red sarcophagus, decorated with flowers, smashed to pieces almost certainly by the anti-Herodian Jewish rebels of AD 66–70. Two other sarcophagi are white, decorated with flowers: do they belong to his sons? Herodium was another miracle of Herod’s construction – a man-made mountain 210 feet in diameter with a massive luxurious palace on top containing a domed bathhouse, towers, frescoes and pools. Herod’s pyramidal tomb was on the Herodium Hill below the eastern tower of the fortress, also destroyed in 66–70