Ένα ενδιαφέρον άρθρο για τις αιτίες του θανάτου του Ηρώδη έχει αναρτηθεί στην ηλεκτρονική έκδοση της Montreal Gazette. Ο συγγραφέας του, A. Mark Clarfield, συζητά τις διάφορες ιστορικές μαρτυρίες και καταλήγει:
“The combination of symptoms was a challenging one, especially the presence of gangrene of the genitalia — something one does not see every day. The scientists used a clever bit of clinical reasoning and came to a tentative conclusion: chronic kidney failure of unknown cause complicated by the rare (thank God) Fournier’s gangrene of the testicles. There are other candidates, of course, such as syphilis or other sexually transmitted diseases, but the kidney diagnosis seemed to fit the symptoms best.”
Ολόκληρο το άρθρο δημοσιεύεται παρακάτω.
An aerial view of the hilltop compound of Herodium in 2007, when Herod’s tomb was finally discovered. No human remains were found, meaning the cause of Herod’s death will never be known for certain, but there’s enough evidence to sustain an educated guess. (Israel Government Press Office via The New York Times)
JERUSALEM — If hockey is Canada’s national sport, archeology is Israel’s. Wherever one walks, one treads on history; wherever one drives, one travels through history. Whenever one talks — well, consider for example a recent phone call I made to my daughter arranging to pick her up: “I’ll take the Valley of the Cross (the reference is obvious), go up Gaza St. (the ancient route from Jerusalem to the coast) and meet you just outside the Western Wall (the only remainder of Jerusalem’s Holy Temple).” If I go hiking near our house, which directly faces the Judean Hills (where John the Baptist hid out in his day), each of my footsteps crunches on pottery shards strewn about rocky terraces built more than 2,000 years ago by the Children of Israel (my forefathers).
When I learned a few years ago that the famous archeologist Ehud Netzer was leading a tour of Herodium, the site where he had located the grave of Herod the Great, I jumped at the chance. The outing was sponsored by a jewel of an institution, the Bible Lands Museum (sponsored in large part by Canadian philanthropy and itself worth a visit, either in person or via its website, blmj.org).
Herod the Great — as opposed to other Herods less grand — was a sort of Jewish king who ruled Palestine under the umbrella of the Roman Empire from 37 BCE until his gruesome death (more on that later) in 4 CE. Among other things, he was known for grandiose and extensive building; he made his kingdom a place of wonder for, and even tourism from, the reaches of the Roman Empire. In addition to Herodium, Herod erected magnificent buildings in Caesarea and Masada, among others, and was responsible for renovating and refurbishing the great temple in Jerusalem.
Herodium, a few kilometres southwest of Jerusalem, was one of the king’s grandest building projects, serving as summer palace, monument and district administrative capital. As our guide explained, “Think of Herodium’s relationship to Jerusalem as Versailles’s to Paris.” As evidence of how important it was to Herod, this complex was the only one of his many impressive sites that he named after himself.
Above all, this was Herod’s self-chosen place of burial. Why there? As Prof. Netzer recounted, at one point Herod, his family and his armed retainers had to escape Jerusalem during a brief siege of the city by the Parthians, the Roman enemy of the month. During this tactical retreat, Herod’s mother was almost killed when her carriage crashed. But she survived, and Herod vowed he would make the spot his place of burial. And so he did.
For the past 100 years, archeologists have worked at Herodium, but no one had located Herod’s grave until just a few years ago, when Netzer, a trained architect, experienced archeologist and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced that he had discovered the mausoleum halfway up the slope of the cone-shaped site. Why are most archeologists so certain that this was indeed the site of the tomb and that Herod was actually buried there? Well, one can read all about it from the pen of Flavius Josephus, a contemporary historian.
The grand mausoleum is still being excavated and is not yet open to the public — unless you happen to be accompanied by the archeologist who discovered it. (Sadly, in 2010, a few months after our tour, Netzer died as a result of a fall suffered at his beloved site.) As I took in the place, I couldn’t help but wonder what illness Herod died from. In the case of most ancient personages, we haven’t got a clue. But here, once again, Josephus steps into the breach. Quoting more contemporary sources (Herod had died several decades before Josephus wrote his own account), he describes the king’s symptoms:
“He had a fever, though not a raging fever, an intolerable itching of the whole skin, continuous pains in the intestines, tumours of the feet as in dropsy, inflammation of the abdomen and gangrene of the privy parts.” He also suffered, according to Josephus, from “limb convulsions, asthma and foul breath.”
The doctors of the day were, not surprisingly, flummoxed by this combination of symptoms. They used the contemporary therapeutic armamentarium, including immersing the patient in a bath of hot oil. But Herod received no relief, and the bath burned his eyes.
The clinically curious of today can turn to the more modern Historical Clinicopathological Conference put on by the University of Maryland, which brings experts together periodically to examine the death of a famous personage, and which recently tackled Herod’s case. The combination of symptoms was a challenging one, especially the presence of gangrene of the genitalia — something one does not see every day. The scientists used a clever bit of clinical reasoning and came to a tentative conclusion: chronic kidney failure of unknown cause complicated by the rare (thank God) Fournier’s gangrene of the testicles. There are other candidates, of course, such as syphilis or other sexually transmitted diseases, but the kidney diagnosis seemed to fit the symptoms best.
Unfortunately for us and for medical history, Prof. Netzer found no human remains in the mausoleum, probably because it had been ransacked by Jewish rebels during the revolt against the Romans about 70 years after Herod died. So we’ll never know the true cause of his death — but the speculation is fascinating.
A. Mark Clarfield is a physician affiliated with the Soroka Hospital Centre and Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, and is an adjunct professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine.
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