The Royal Banquet Hall of King Herod the Great in Jerusalem Archaeological Discoveries Near the Temple Mount Robin Ngo

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The Royal Banquet Hall of King Herod the Great in Jerusalem Archaeological discoveries near the Temple Mount Robin Ngo Did archaeologists find the royal banqueting complex of King Herod the Great in Jerusalem? Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Joseph Patrich and Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah believe so, and they present the find in “Old, New Banquet Hall by the Temple Mount” in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. According to Patrich and Weksler-Bdolah, this dining complex “is arguably the most splendid Herodian building to have survived the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.” One of the two dining halls that comprised the royal Part of the building complex in question was first banqueting complex of King Herod the Great. Three discovered by pioneering archaeologist Charles attached pilasters are still visible on the wall. Photo: Assaf Warren (later Sir Charles Warren) in 1867. Warren Peretz, IAA. had excavated a magnificent hall, which he called the Free Masons Hall, some 400 feet from where the Jerusalem Temple stood. The building was investigated again in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the renewed excavations, led by Alexander Onn of the Israel Antiquities Authority between 2007 and 2012, that the complex was uncovered in its entirety. The recent exploration revealed a building that Patrich and Weksler-Bdolah believe to be the royal banqueting complex of King Herod the Great, located only 75 feet from the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. An elaborate room identical to Warren’s Free Masons Hall, dubbed the Western Hall, was found; archaeologists now believe these were dining halls (see Rooms 21 and 23 below). In between the dining halls, a fountain room and a reservoir were discovered. The plan of the banqueting complex (in green) shows the The dining halls were set up in Western Hall (21), the Fountain Room (22) with a reservoir the style of Greco-Roman (112) and the Free Masons Hall (23). Photo: Dan Bahat, triclinia, where couches for Vadim Essman, Natalya Zak, IAA. reclining and eating would have been placed alongside the walls. While the couches themselves have not been preserved, their traces remain visible on the walls of the dining rooms. In between the dining halls was a fountain room elaborately decorated with six adorned pilasters (see image below). The Corinthian capitals that topped the pilasters had holes cut into them, serving as fountain heads through which water from the hidden reservoir flowed. The Fountain Room. “The architectural style, magnificence and sophistication of the building, with its Visible are the attached integrated fountain, suggest that it was sponsored by Herod himself,” write pilasters with Patrich and Weksler-Bdolah. Corinthian capitals that served as fountain heads. Photo: Assaf Peretz, IAA..

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