The excavation of Machaerus where John the Baptist was imprisoned and executed

Interesting lecture at the British Museum given by Goyzo Voros from the Hungarian Academy of Arts on the excavations at Machaerus, the castle just outside Jerusalem where it is believed John the Baptist was killed.

He gave a good history of the identification of the site and previous digs there. He then went on to detail some of his work. Most interesting was the fact he had pieces together some of the fragments of columns to reconstruct two of different styles to give an idea of what the place might have looked like.

He also talked about whether he thought the story of the Baptist’s imprisonment and Salome’s dancing was true. In the light of the fact he has not found a dungeon on the site, he felt that the imprisonment might have been house arrest in the lower city which he felt was backed up by the fact that the Baptist seemed to have had a lot of contact with the outside world during this period.

 

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