According to the Gospels, Herod was the king when Jesus was born. Though there is no historical evidence for Jesus, a tomb belonging to Herod has been found in West Bank. It contains a sacrophagus believed to contain Herod’s remains. The tomb was found in Herodium, the only site which carries Herod’s name.
An ancient staircase used in a royal funeral procession led an Israeli archaeologist to solve a 2,000-year-old mystery, the location of the tomb of the Roman-anointed “King of the Jews,” Herod the Great.
The pieces of the “large unique” sarcophagus, made of Jerusalem reddish limestone and decorated with rosettes, was discovered on the northeast slope of the mesa, where archaeological excavation began in August 2006.
“Only very few similar sarcophagi are known in the country and can be found only in elaborate tombs,” he said.
It “was broken into hundreds of pieces, no doubt deliberately,” Netzer said, adding that it appeared to have been destroyed between 66 and 72 AD during the first Jewish revolt against the Romans.[Israeli
archaeologists unearth King Herod’s tomb]
According to the legends, Moses was born at a time when the Pharaoh
had ordered all male children to be killed by drowning in the Nile. King Herod
of Jerusalem, who lived in the first century BC, in a similar fashion ordered
all male children to be killed to prevent a threat to his rule. There was a
prophecy that he would lose this throne to the newly born King of Jews and like
Kamsa, he wanted
to preempt it. Historians believe that this incident was copied from the Exodus
to show Jesus as the new Moses and it never happened.
Herod died a natural death, unlike Kamsa and was buried in Herodium as per
the documents of historian
Josephus
Flavius. They were not able to find his grave, till this week.
See Also:
Herod’s
Tomb: The Hebrew University Press Conference
