Field Notes: Herodium

I went on a trip as a volunteer to Israel about a month ago to help do some ground penetrating radar (GPR) for a couple archeologists. While we were there, we did some scanning at Herodium at the request of Prof. Ehud Netzer. He has been doing excavations at this site for over 30 years. He told us that he still wanted to find Herod's tomb, so that he could feel good about retiring. There have been many speculations, but they hadn't found it at that time, but there was some new hope because a new area was being uncovered on the side of the hill showed some promise. He asked us to scan in the new area as well as at the base of the tower in the previously excavated area (a GPR team in the past said that the tomb was in the tower, but he didn't believe them).

To me it felt a bit like "looking for a needle in a haystack." There was a lot of area to cover, and we could not really give them any definitive data from our scans because the type of antenna that we had with us could only penetrate about 1.3 m in that type of soil. In addition, the fill on top of the stone was hard packed, so there was not enough of a dielectric change for us to detect with the equipment. We didn't know before we arrived in Israel what the scenario would be like in this location, which was unfornate. We were rather disappointed that we were not able to tell them more specific information (we did find some anomolies, but they weren't conclusive). However, it was a great experience to be able to work with Yaakov Kalman, Roi Porat, and the Bedouins who where helping with the dig. We even got to have lunch in the home of one of the Bedouin workers, which was a real surprise for us (the hospitality was terrific).

While we were scanning, we looked in some of the tunnels/entrances into the side of the hill. In the process, we saw some very large stones that Yaakov got very excited about. He said he had never seen stones like them at Herodium before.

Today, Prof. Netzer announced that they found Herod's tomb. When I saw photos of where they found it, I see that we were walking almost right on top of it. It is very exciting because we were working with this team just one month ago. Below are some photos from the archeological site.

We scanned at the site, but we were not able to detect much because of similar rock/fill dielectric constants and the frequency of our antenna was a little too high to reach the depths that we wanted to see. I guess they found it anyway.

Roi and Yaakov are excavating an area that is near the entrance to where they found the tomb.

Above are a glimpse of the area where "large stones" were that Yaakov saw the day we were scanning. He was very surprised by them and said he had never seen such large stones at the site before. It appears that these may have been the clues that led them to finding the tomb.

View of Herodium from a distance.