After a more than 30-year search, an Israeli archeologist announced that he has solved the 2,000-year-old mystery of where King Herod is buried.

Hebrew University archeologist Ehud Netzer said late Monday that he found the tomb of "The King of the Jews" at Mount Herodium, a site south of Jerusalem on a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert.

Herod built a palace on the hill. Researchers say they found his grave, sarcophagus and mausoleum on Herodium's northeastern slope. The site is located in an Israeli-controlled part of the West Bank.

"We have all the attributes, all the things that tell us clearly it's a burial (site)," archeologist Yaakov Kalman told CTV News.

The site, in what is now the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was located more than a month ago.

Netzer and his team began searching for the tomb at Herodium in 1972.

They knew Herod once built a summer palace there, but only after they moved to a higher plateau did they finally start to solve the ancient mystery.

The sarcophagus was found smashed, with pieces strewn among the ruins, most likely by Jews who rebelled against Rome from 66 to 72 AD, the team said in a statement.

Netzer also found ornately decorated urns alongside the tomb and sarcophagus.

"It's a sarcophagus we don't just see anywhere," Netzer told a news conference. "It is something very special."

Stephen Pfann, an expert at the University of the Holy Land, described the find as a major one, but he wants to see an inscription.

"We're moving in the right direction. It will be clinched once we have an inscription that bears his name," he told the Associated Press.

Initial descriptions point it to being Herod's tomb, said Duke University professor Eric Myers, who has worked on such excavations.

"We know he was buried at Herodium," he told AP. "It's a significant find after a long search."

Who was Herod?

Herod ruled as the Roman-appointed king of Judea from about 37 BC until his death in 4 BC.

The king is believed to be the legendary builder of the second Jewish Temple, the wall that still stands around the Old City of Jerusalem and Herodium, which is deemed to be the most outstanding of his construction projects. The Western Wall is one of the most sacred sites in Judaism.

The approach to the burial site on the hillside is via a monumental, 6.5-metre-wide flight of stairs that was specifically constructed for Herod's funeral procession.

It has long been assumed Herod was buried at Herodium, but decades of excavations failed to turn up the site.

The 1st century historian Josephus Flavius described the site of Herodium in detail, as well as Herod's funeral procession.

Herodium was one of the last strongholds controlled by Jewish rebels fighting against the Romans.

It was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops in AD 71, a year after they destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Herod was noted in the New Testament for his Massacre of the Innocents.

When told of Jesus' birth, Herod ordered all children under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed, the Gospel of Matthew states.

With a report from CTV's Janis Mackey Frayer and files from the Associated Press