Herod Agrippa built the port city of Caesarea Maritima for Caesar

by Damien F. Mackey “The port was called Sebastos, meaning Augustus and Caesarea for Caesar. The entire project was funded by the King. Herod had been in Rome in 40 B.C.E. when the city was experiencing a vibrant building programme which may have inspired his imagination. Here, he met Marcus Agrippa who had dedicated both his organizational talent and his fortune to the rebuilding of the imperial city”. Barbara Mary Denis Bergin Wait a minute: “Herod Agrippa built the port city of Caesarea Maritima”? But wasn’t it Herod ‘the Great’, at the time of Augustus Caesar, who had built it? Yes to both, according to my recent re-arrangement of the Herods, which has Herod ‘the Great’ as both Agrippa I and Agrippa II: Let us not over multiply the Herods and Agrippas (3) Revising the Herodian Narrative in Context Hence the King Herod who turned to worms whilst hoping to attain to deity: The cruel wages of apotheosis (3) The cruel wages of apotheosis was not Herod Agrippa so-called I, as is commonly thought, but the cruel persecutor of the early Christians, Herod Antipas the Tetrarch. But who, then, was Luke 2:1’s “Caesar Augustus”? A Roman emperor as we have tended to think? No, Caesar Augustus was actually the wicked Seleucid king, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, who, just like Herod Antipas later would, had aspired to divinity and had likewise died a horrible worm-eaten death (“The cruel wages …”): Time to consider Hadrian, that ‘mirror-image’ of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, as also the census emperor Augustus https://www.academia.edu/113850870/Time_to_consider_Hadrian_that_mirror_image_of_Antiochus_Epiphanes_as_also_the_census_emperor_Augustus This, of course, plays major havoc with the conventional C2nd-C1st BC chronology and it throws a huge doubt on Barbara Mary Denis Bergin’s date, above, that “Herod had been in Rome in 40 B.C.E …”. The emperor Augustus was even more than that. He was also the Grecophile emperor, Hadrian, as according to the “Time to consider Hadrian …” article (above). So far, we have Herod ‘the Great’ also as Agrippa I and II. And we have Caesar Augustus also as Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, a Greek, and as Hadrian. But Herod ‘the Great’ was yet much more. He was, as well, Philip the barbaric Phrygian, worse than his master, the right-hand man of the emperor Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’: Herod, the emperor’s signet right-hand man (3) Herod, the emperor's signet right-hand man Thus Herod was a Phrygian, not an Idumean (Edomite) as we have been told. And he was also Marcus Agrippa, the right-hand signet ring of Caesar Augustus: Marcus Agrippa a barbaric Phrygian (3) Marcus Agrippa a barbaric Phrygian It does not hurt my case at all that Agrippa so-called II also had the famous name of Marcus Julius Agrippa. Having laid the foundation, we can now proceed to a relevant portion of the article of Barbara Mary Denis Bergin, where she tells of Herod supposedly meeting Marcus Agrippa: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329400253_The_Innovative_Genius_of_Herod_at_Caesarea_Maritima Cultural and Religious Studies, July 2018, Vol. 6, No. 7, 377-390 doi: 10.17265/2328-2177/2018.07.001 The Innovative Genius of Herod at Caesarea Maritima Barbara Mary Denis Bergin Independent Researcher, Dublin, Ireland [Herod’s] fortune was secure and he was prepared to put it to good use in creating a state of the art port-city in honour of his royal patron. Some scholars would disagree and point to financial support from Rome. There is no written record of Herod asking permission from Augustus to build the port-city but it is unlikely that he would have been refused consent; after all, it was a tribute in concrete and stone to the emperor. The port was called Sebastos, meaning Augustus and Caesarea for Caesar. The entire project was funded by the King. Herod had been in Rome in 40 B.C.E. when the city was experiencing a vibrant building programme which may have inspired his imagination. Here, he met Marcus Agrippa [sic] who had dedicated both his organizational talent and his fortune to the rebuilding of the imperial city. …. The two became friends. This friendship would turn out to be crucial. Where would Herod find suitable craftsmen to carry out his unique project? Within his own realm, he had a ready pool of Syro-Phoenician harbour builders with considerable knowledge of building and maintaining ports and havens on the Levantine coast (Raban, 2009). Many scholars believe now that Herod sourced a skilled labour force through Agrippa who would have had access to Roman master builders with all the technological experience needed for such a project (Hohlfelder, 2000). Herod brought together architects, engineers, and artisans from the Greco-Roman world and paired these with the genius and expertise of his Jewish builders to face the major challenge of building a monumental harbour out into the open sea. Where could Herod source raw materials? There was plenty of local kurkar sandstone but there was a major problem in that there were no trees growing near the proposed site. Secondly, the necessary element for hydraulic concrete, pozzolana, was only available from the Bay of Naples in Italy, thus a major logistical snag confronted Herod. How to get the raw materials required to Palestine required a pioneering approach to logistics. Josephus reports that Herod travelled to Antioch regularly as a young man (JA XIV.440, 451; JW I.328512) and he had refurbished stadia and a stoa there (JA XXVI.148; JW.425) (Votruba, 2007). His reputation would have insured local cooperation. There is no documentary evidence of any arrangement between Agrippa and Herod that authorized the transport of timber (7,100 metric tonnes) (Votruba, 2007) from within the Mediterranean area or the shipment of pozzolana (20,000 metric tonnes) (Brandon, Hohlfelder, Jackson, & Oleson, 2014) but the analysis of the timber used for the construction taken from the under-water formwork proves that the wood came from the southern shore of Turkey (Votruba, 2007). Examination of probes taken in Sebastos by the ROMACONS’ Team and analysed in laboratories corroborates the supposition that pozzolana was imported from Puzzuoli in Italy (Hohfelder, Brandon, Jackson, & Oleson, 2007). …. Previously I wrote in connection with all of this: …. In my article on the Games in Caesarea … [“Herod and Games at Caesarea - Agrippa and Games at Caesarea”: (3) Herod and Games at Caesarea - Agrippa and Games at Caesarea], I had hinted that King Herod and Agrippa so-called I were one and the same king, celebrating a Games for the emperor in Caesarea. Also in that article there was found an uncanny connection between Herod and Marcus Agrippa: Apropos of this connection, Herod as Marcus Agrippa, there is an intriguing article by Robert L. Hohlfelder, “Beyond Coincidence? Marcus Agrippa and King Herod's Harbor” (JNES, 59(4), 2000): The Roman harbour at Caesarea “commissioned by Herod the Great in 22 BCE and sponsored by Augustus' military commander Marcus Agrippa …”. Now I am presuming that Agrippa I and II must also have been one and the same, particularly given that II had the other name of - wait for it - Marcus Julius Agrippa. And, so, the merry-go-round continues. I think that the Herod and (Marcus) Agrippa combination pertains just to King Herod.