Judaea

Judaea, the Roman province, included parts of the areas of the Hasmonean and Herodium kingdoms, notably Biblical Judah, Samaria, and Edom. Its capital was Caesarea Maritima. Roman influence in the region began in 63 CE, when the Roman general Pompey the Great took over Syria from Mithridates and, coming into Jerusalem, occupied the Second Temple. Pompey appointed Antipater, the father of Herod, as the first Roman Procurator. Later these ties allowed Herod to seek backing from Rome against the Hasmoneans in 40 BCE, when the senate recognized him as "king of the Jews." His territories came to include the regions of Galilee, Gaulanitis (the Golan),Peraea and the Decapolis. Herod balanced his allegiance to Rome with the independence of his kingdom, often employing architectural projects to express his ambitions and control of nature to express his capacity to rule . His many palaces, placed strategically around the kingdom, feature dramatically designed landscapes and gardens. Upon his death, his heirs were unable to maintain order and Judea was annexed to Syria in 6 CE, although it was assigned its own procurator. By the time of Trajan, Judea was reduced in size and the Herodian palaces abandoned, preserving them over the millennia for archaeologists. Hadrian renamed the province Syria Palaestina after the Bar Kochba revolts (132-135) provoked him to erase the name of Judea. The period for which we have the richest evidence of a garden culture in this region is during the reign of Herod the Great. A client king of Rome, Herod's relationships with Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Augustus and Marcus Agrippa and other officials have been preserved in the texts of Flavius Josephus. These constitute a rare record of interactions between Rome and its territories, and provide a valuable context for understanding the trends of design in the early imperial period. The proximity of Judea to Alexandria, whose palaces and gardens lie beneath the modern city and its harbors, may also provide a suggestion of the late Hellenistic garden culture that Romans emulated. Evidence of gardens in the Hasmonean winter palaces at Jericho and the palaces of Hyracanus the Tobiad on the other side of the Jordan Valley provide rare cases where texts can illuminate archaeological evidence. These gardens require further investigation and both are threatened by local development. This geography of Judaea comprises a wide variety of biomes, from richly watered plains of the Galilee and the Jordan, to the semi arid Judean Hills, the humid, fertile coastal plain of the Mediterranean, and the deserts of the Dead Sea valley and the Negev.

Places

• Iudaea (province) (Pleiades:981527)
• Judean Desert (desert) (TGN:8713913)