Image Details

Albatross/Duby Tal

Around 23 B.C.E. Herod the Great built a pavilion similar to Qasr el-Abd at Herodium, 10 miles south of Jerusalem. This pavilion (center, foreground) was surrounded by a pool, measuring 135 feet by 210 feet, and a colonnade. Sitting at the foot of Herod’s palace, built into an artificial volcano-like mountain, the pavilion-and-pool functioned as a kind of desert oasis for the royal family and their guests.