ENTRANCE TO HEROD'S TOMB

The tombs at Herodium are built into the side of the hill

The tomb, which contained the sarcophagus of Herod the Great and two unnamed members of his family, was a lavish two-storey structure with a cone-shaped roof about 25 meters high.

At present, no-one knows who was buried in the two other sarcophagi, but it is tempting to think that one of them was for beautiful, aristocratic Mariamme.

Herod, supposedly jealous and paranoid, had her strangled for infidelity - but was it jealousy, or political expedience?

He is said to have regretted his action, and had her body preserved in honey. It could be that her honeyed corpse found its final rest at Herodium. 

The Jewish historian Josephus gives a graphic account of the disease which led to King Herod's own death:

'Herod's distemper greatly increased upon him after a sever manner: a fire glowed in him slowly, which did not so much appear to the touch outwardly as it augmented his pains inwardly; for it brought upon him a vehement appetite for eating which he could not avoid to supply with one sort of food or another. His entrails were also exulcerated, and the chief violence of his pain lay in his colon; an aqueous and transparent liquor also had settled itself about his feet, and a like matter afflicted him at the bottom of his belly. Nay, farther, his privy member was putrefied and produced worms; and except when he sat upright he had a difficulty of breathing, which was very loathsome, on account of the stench of his breath, and the quickness of its returns; he had also convulsions in all parts of his body, which increased his strength to an insufferable degree.' (Antiquities of the Jews, XVII, 6, 5)

A medical doctor, Mr Norman Manson, made the following comment:

'Josephus paints a vivid picture of the dying Herod's physical condition, which is not an unusual one...
It is that of an aged arterio-sclerotic - the one-time athlete and hard liver -  becoming increasingly prone to mood changes, delusions of persecution, uncontrolled outburst of hypertensive cerebral attacks, even attempted suicide.
Coincidentally heart and kidney function deteriorates and dropsy develops, affecting at an early stage the lungs, and causing breathlessness. Poisons, no longer excreted, accumulate in the blood. The mouth becomes ulcerated with foul breath, there is a burning pain in the stomach, ulceration of the bowel wall and diarrhoea. A low grade fever is a normal accompaniment of such a condition and convulsions may occur at any time.
The dropsy steadily increases, the liver becomes enlarged and painful and the abdomen fills with fluid. At this stage the scrotum may be enormously distended and any dependent part gangrenous. Such a lesion would quickly become infested with maggots.'