JERUSALEM — For more than three decades, Israeli archeologist Ehud Netzer scraped at the ancient man-made hillock. He searched the top. He dug at the bottom. Finally Netzer carved into the midsection and there, he says, found his prize: the grave of Herod the Great.
The evidence, in the form of shards of decorative stonework that may have been a coffin and pieces of a structure thought to have been the mausoleum, is still far from ironclad proof. Archeologists have not found a body. Nor is there any written confirmation yet that King Herod, who ruled with Roman backing 2,000 years ago, is buried in that spot.
But Netzer, a 72-year-old archeologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Tuesday that he had little doubt that the find is Herod's tomb. Herod built a palace at the site on a West Bank hill south of Jerusalem and is long believed to have prepared his own burial site on the cone-shaped mound. Netzer said the discovery was the high point of decades of digging at the site. Additional digging is planned.
"It's a great satisfaction. I'm not sure I myself have digested it fully," Netzer said during a news conference at Hebrew University that drew scores of Israeli and foreign journalists.
The discovery is important because Herod, elected "king of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BC, "was one of the greatest builders that land has ever seen," said James H. Charlesworth, a professor of religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. "He was one of the most influential people in the Roman Empire -- a friend of Anthony, a friend of Cleopatra."
Herod's projects included an expansion of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, decades after Herod's death.
He was also the ruler who, according to the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, ordered the slaying of all the infants in Bethlehem, forcing Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus to flee to Egypt.
"This is really quite a striking discovery," said James Strange, a professor of religion at the University of South Florida. "This is the very first king of Israel whose tomb we have ever found. We have some other candidates, but the tombs are all empty. If they really have kingly artifacts" it will stand as a major discovery, he said.
Netzer, with close-cropped silver hair and an unassuming manner, appeared taken aback by all the attention. But he was clearly pleased to report a successful end to a long and arduous hunt.
