Herodium was King Herod's most elaborate project. The hilltop palace in the Judean desert with passages and hidden chambers became the king's mausoleum. Archaeologists have recently found a 65-foot corridor that would have provided the "royal entourage" with direct entry into the palace courtyard, according to io9.
"The corridor was built as part of Herod's plan to turn Herodium into a massive artificial volcano-shaped hill, a vast and impressive monument designed to commemorate the architect-King," Hebrew University archaeologists Roi Porat, Yakov Kalman and Rachel Chachy wrote in a statement, according to io9.
The site of Herodium was initially discovered by a renowned Israeli architect, Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University, in 2007.
"Trained as an architect, he worked as an assistant to the archaeologist Yigael Yadin, who from 1963 to 1965 led an exhaustive dig at Masada, the fortified plateau near the Dead Sea where Herod built two palaces," wrote Smithsonian Magazine during a 2009 interview with Netzer. "In 1976, Netzer led a team that discovered the site of one of Herod's infamous misdeeds: the murder of his young brother-in-law, Aristobulus, whom Herod ordered to be drowned in a pool at his winter palace complex near Jericho. Yet the discovery of Herod's tomb would be Netzer's most celebrated find."
"Surprisingly, during the course of the excavations, it became evident that the arched corridor was never actually in use, as prior to its completion it became redundant," the archeologists wrote, according to io9. "This appears to have happened when Herod, aware of his impending death, decided to convert the whole hilltop complex into a massive memorial mound -a royal burial monument on an epic scale. Whatever the case, the corridor was back-filled during the construction of the massive artificial hill at the end of Herod's reign."
Once excavation is complete, Herodium will be open to travelers and tourists to enter in the same corridor that Herod planned 2,000 years ago.
