Abstract
Herod “the Great”, king of Judea in the second half of the first century BC, was known for his building projects, wealth, and political power. Two of his personal calcite-alabaster bathtubs, found in the Kypros fortress and the palace of Herodium, are among the very limited archaeological evidence of his private life. It seemed plausible that they were imported from Egypt, the main source of calcite-alabaster in ancient periods. Yet, the recent identification of a calcite quarry in the Te’omim cave, Israel, challenges this hypothesis. Here, we developed an approach for identification of the source of calcite-alabaster, by combination of four analytical methods: ICP, FTIR, ssNMR and isotope ratio. These methods were then applied to Herod’s bathtubs demonstrating that they were indeed quarried in Israel rather than in Egypt.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7524 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was supported by The Israel Science Foundation, Grant No. 104\2013. We thank the Ministry of Science and Technology, Israel for a MA fellowship to Ayala Amir (Grant No. 3-10713). We thank Vanessa Novak from the Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung, Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna for the generous gift of Egyptian Alabaster vessels; Roi Porat, Yakov Kalman and Rachel Chachy, The Herodium Expedition, The institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for providing the sample of calcite-alabaster from the Herodium bathtub; Dr. Ortal Haik, Dr. Keren Adamsky-keinan, Dr. Adi Eliyahu and Yael Amid for their help with the ICP, ssNMR, routine IR and isotope ratio experiments, respectively.
Funding Information:
This study was supported by The Israel Science Foundation, Grant No. 104\2013. We thank the Ministry of Science and Technology, Israel for a MA fellowship to Ayala Amir (Grant No. 3-10713). We thank Vanessa Novak from the Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung, Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna for the generous gift of Egyptian Alabaster vessels; Roi Porat, Yakov Kalman and Rachel Chachy, The Herodium Expedition, The institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for providing the sample of calcite-alabaster from the Herodium bathtub; Dr. Ortal Haik, Dr. Keren Adamsky-keinan, Dr. Adi Eliyahu and Yael Amid for their help with the ICP, ssNMR, routine IR and isotope ratio experiments, respectively.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).