Archaeological Views: Herod the Great Gardener
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Everyone familiar with the palaces of Herod the Great (r. 47–4 B.C.E.) has seen their stunning locations in the most extreme landscapes of ancient Judea. From the surf of Caesarea to Wadi Qelt at Jericho to the precipices of Masada, Herod’s building projects defied nature. Controlling nature for ancient kings was a way to show their subjects that they had the power to rule and, quite possibly, the favor of higher power as well.
Herod claimed the larger landscape with his palaces, but he also brought the landscape inside the palace, in the form of gardens.
But what could be left of a garden to be studied by archaeologists after 2,000 years? Admittedly, we cannot find the remains of lush plantings, beautiful scents, the sounds of birds, or the cooling spray of a fountain. At the same time, gardens are not entirely ephemeral. For example, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. preserved the art and fountains of gardens, the walks, the irrigation systems, and the shape of the planting beds. As the plants decayed, volcanic ash filled in the cavities, and archaeologists are now able to make casts of the roots to determine the location and general size of the plants.
Scholars of Roman gardens have surveyed all of the known gardens around the Roman Empire and located more than 1,200 known or suspected gardens! Many of these gardens are identified by the rich garden soils in courtyards, the remains of pools and fountains, bases for statues, and ceramic plant pots, often preserved in the ground. From this evidence, we can work out the design of the garden and how it related to the architecture of the house or to the wider landscape or town. The gardens of Herod are among the best preserved archaeologically outside of the unique Vesuvian region.
Sadly, it is very difficult to identify the actual plants. However, palynologist Dafna Langgut, Head of the Archaeobotany and Ancient Environments Laboratory at Tel Aviv University’s Nadler Institute of Archaeology, has developed a technique of recovering pollen from the plasters around ancient gardens. Her success at the Persian palace at Ramat Rachel led to an ongoing effort to study the palaces of Herod the Great and contemporary gardens in Italy.
Another approach is to study plant phytoliths, which are microscopic minerals that accumulate in living plants and survive long after the plants decay. Such studies have given evidence for palm trees in Petra, Jordan, and grass turf as well as palms in Stabiae, Italy.
Palace gardens of the first centuries B.C.E. and C.E. were quite unlike anything we know today. It was a period of intense innovation in garden forms, in the propagation and aesthetics of the plants, and in their role in the space. Aristocrats of the late Hellenistic and Roman world liked to stroll in their gardens for pleasure and while doing business. In a small garden, you might look into a courtyard as you walked around it, viewing it from many angles without ever entering. In a larger garden, you might cross the courtyard along a single path. If you had even more space, you could arrange your walks in parallel rows separated by beds of varied widths offering arrays of plant compositions to admire. Fountains, birdbaths, and—where acceptable—statuary also ornamented the walks. Gardens of these types are known throughout the Roman Empire, although in Judea the tradition was to pave the courtyards.
Herod’s palaces fully engaged—and perhaps even led—the garden trends of his day.
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Herod wintered at the old Hasmonean palaces along Wadi Qelt in Jericho. This stunning location was surrounded by the plantations of palm and balsam that made him a very wealthy ruler. What could be lovelier to behold? He built an artificial hill to overlook the scene. Herod outfitted the palace complex with the latest in garden arrangements.
During the Kelso/Baramki excavations, in the 1950s, and the Netzer excavations, after the 1970s, planting pots were found in many complexes of the winter palace. Beside the great swimming pools, rows of pots delineated walkways for strolling. A small peristyle beside the dining hall along Wadi Qelt featured neat rows of flower pots. Crossing a bridge over the wadi lay the greatest of the gardens, a vast terrace with places to stroll at each end. Partially excavated by William Kelso and Dimitri Baramki, this garden is one of the largest, best preserved garden complexes of the Roman world. Its full extent has never been revealed, but one side was a niched wall, enlivened by water and fine ornamentation. A theater was built into the center of this wall, its seats filled not with spectators but rows of flower pots!
It is nearly impossible to imagine gardens on the top of the mountain at Masada, but the evidence for them is considerable and continues to grow. Here plants are preserved through desiccation, and archaeologists found date palm pits dating to Herod’s day (in a rubbish pit rather than the garden). To the world’s amazement, one of the pits sprouted (with the help of some growth medium) a fine male palm known originally as Methuselah.
The North Palace featured luxurious accommodations, some ornamented with wall paintings of bountiful garlands, in stark contrast with the views of the Dead Sea beyond.
On the south end of the mountain, Herod provided swimming pools, a columbarium (dovecote), and other features of a garden watered by the deep cistern nearby, as well as a canal bringing water from the nearby bath complex.
Scatters of potsherds, bits of charcoal and bone, from both Herod’s day and the time of the First Jewish Revolt, are characteristic of fertilized soils in the areas near the pools. So far only test excavations have been undertaken, but the new campaign, by Guy Stibel and Dafna Langgut, is taking a further look at the gardens of Masada with promising results.a
At Herodium, Herod provided gardens for himself in the luxuriant and spacious facilities at the base of the mountain around a large courtyard with a boating pool and pavilion. But, for the event of siege, he also had a fine small peristyle garden within the fortress palace at the top of the hill. Here no pots were found, 070but a rich brown loam suggests the presence of the gardens. Upon Herod’s death, garden terraces were built into the slopes below what is believed to be his tomb.
Finally, the royal seaside palace at Caesarea Maritima is a particularly inhospitable place for a garden, with its salt-laden air. But Ehud Netzer quickly recognized that cuttings in the rock around the pool of the lower promontory were planters for vegetation, once again defying nature. The huge courtyard of the upper area of the palace saw centuries of use, and it appears to have been paved. Recent studies by Langgut detected pollen in the plaster of the columns surrounding the courtyard. Surprisingly, it featured hazelnut trees, not a traditional garden or orchard plant of ancient Judea, but one popular in Italy.
The best ancient literary description of Herod’s gardens is of his palace in Jerusalem, which we can locate, but it is not sufficiently preserved for excavation. Josephus recounts: “All the courts that were exposed to the air were everywhere green. There were, moreover, several groves of trees, and long walks through them, with deep canals, and cisterns, that in several parts were filled with brazen statues, through which the water ran out. There were withal many dovecotes of tame pigeons about the canals” (Jewish War 5.180–181).
Thus, while Herod is well known for his great architectural contributions, he should be equally credited for his prowess in innovative landscape and garden design—an all-the-more impressive achievement considering the difficult locations he chose for his astounding projects.
Everyone familiar with the palaces of Herod the Great (r. 47–4 B.C.E.) has seen their stunning locations in the most extreme landscapes of ancient Judea. From the surf of Caesarea to Wadi Qelt at Jericho to the precipices of Masada, Herod’s building projects defied nature. Controlling nature for ancient kings was a way to show their subjects that they had the power to rule and, quite possibly, the favor of higher power as well. Herod claimed the larger landscape with his palaces, but he also brought the landscape inside the palace, in the form of gardens. But what could […]
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Footnotes
1. See Guy D. Stiebel and Boaz Gross, “Masada Shall Never Fail (to Surprise) Again,” BAR, 44:05.