HERODIUM. - A characteristic artificial hill with a truncated-cone shape located 6 km from Bethlehem in a south-easterly direction. Herod the Great erected there a monument called H. probably to commemorate the victory won over the Jews who attacked him while he was travelling from Jerusalem to Masada (Fl. Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XIV, 9, 4; Bell. Iud., I, 21, 10; IV, 9, 5). By his own choice he was buried there (Antiq. Iud., XVII, 8, 3; Bell. Iud., I, 33, 9).

No excavations have ever been carried out there; nevertheless one can recognize there, at the top, a surrounding wall and circular chambers arranged at the four cardinal points and, at the bottom, many remains of cisterns and a reservoir. By the Arabs it is called Gebel el-Furejdis ("mountain of the little paradise").

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: C. Schick, Der Frauenberg, in Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 3 (1880), pp. 88-89 and pls. 4-5, with largely ideal reconstructions; C. R. Conder, Survey of western Palestine, III, London 1883, pp. 330-32, with a sketch of the ruins; F.-M. Abel, Exils et tombeaux des Héodes, in Revue biblique, 53 (1946), pp. 67-69.

@incollection{ec6_herodium, author = {Bagatti, Bellarmino}, title = {Herodium}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {1420}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/herodium} }

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