New evidence from the site of Herod the Great’s planned mausoleum suggests that this was indeed the site of his grave in the late 1st century BC.

The mausoleum, among the remains of which a sarcophagus plausibly identified as Herod’s was found, was a two-storey structure with a concave-conical roof, about 25 metres (80ft) high — a lavish structure appropriate to Herod’s status and known extravagant tastes.

“The sarcophagus was found shattered all over the place. It seems it was taken from its place and was destroyed in a fit of rage,” Professor Ehud Netzer’s team report. “That, among other things, is what tells us it was the sarcophagus of Herod.”

The insurgents reviled the memory of Herod as a Roman puppet, and the team believe that the violence inflicted on the sarcophagus suggests that the rebels knew it held the king’s bones.

The excavations at the Herodium site have also yielded many fragments of two additional sarcophagi, which Netzer believes to have been for members of Herod’s family.

The mausoleum was deliberately destroyed by the Jewish rebels who occupied the site during the First Jewish Revolt against the Romans which started in about AD66, Netzer said in a National Geographic magazine report.

Herod was the Roman-appointed king of Judea from 37BC to 4BC, renowned for his many monumental building projects, including the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, a spectacular palace at Masada and the harbour and city of Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast, as well as the palatial complex at Herodium, nine miles south of Jerusalem. There is a surviving account, by the Roman historian Flavius Josephus, of Herodium and of Herod’s funeral procession there.

Also found in the latest excavations are the remains of an intimate theatre just below and to the west of the mausoleum, with seats for some 650-750 spectators, and a loggia (a kind of VIP box) located at the top of the theatre seats and decorated with wall paintings and plaster mouldings in a style that has not been seen thus far in Israel. The style is known to have existed in Italy, at Rome and in Campania, where it is dateable to between 15BC and 10BC.

The murals depict windows opening on to painted landscapes, one of which shows what appears to be a southern Italian farm, with a dog, bushes and what looks like a country villa just visible.

The dating of the wall paintings makes it reasonable to assume, says Netzer, that construction of the theatre might be linked to the visit by the Roman general and politician Marcus Agrippa to Herodium in 15BC.

The theatre and its luxurious loggia were then deliberately destroyed for the creation of the conical artificial mound that constitutes the popular image of the Herodium, apparently built at the very end of Herod’s reign.

Netzer is convinced that the Herodium would never have been built had it not been for Herod’s known determination to be buried in this isolated, arid area: he undoubtedly personally chose the exact location for his mausoleum since it overlooks Jerusalem and its surroundings.

This choice led to his decision to make the entire complex the pinnacle of his building programme and to name it after himself.

The palace was the largest of its kind in the Roman world of that time and must have attracted hundreds, if not thousands, of guests yearly, Netzer believes.

He hopes that the new findings at Herodium, where he has worked for many years, will lead to increased tourism, and that the overall area might be converted into a national park.