RUINS OF A POOL AT JERICHO

A pool with opus reticulatum in surrounding walls

This structure is probably part of a laconicum or sweating hall in the baths of the palace - Herod and his guests were fond of the Roman practice of public bathing.

The walls behind this pool are done in a style of brickwork popular at the time, opus reticulatum. The brick-layer pushed the shaped bricks into a wall of concrete, giving the impression of a decorative net.

'Jericho being a sandy plain with no stone in the vicinity, brick has from Neolithic times been the general building material.

But Herod's brick-work is far finer than anything attempted there before or since. So fine is it, with its opus reticulatum, its colonnettes, its niches, its brick-terraced gardens, its rills and mirror-like basins, that it suggests Babylonian work.

In the whole of Mesopotamia there is no stone whatever, and in consequence some of the finest brickwork the world has seen is the product of Babylonian and Iraqi bricklayers. Given the strong bonds between the Jewry of Babylon and Jerusalem, it is quite probable that Herod brought brick makers and builders from Babylon.' 
(Stewart Perowne, The Life and Times of Herod the Great, p120) 

The wall behind the pool has niches - presumably for sitting? Normally one might expect them to contain statues, but this was a sensitive matter, since Jews were forbidden by the Second Commandment to have images of living creatures.

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