Archelais
Archelaïs was a town in the Roman
province of Palaestina Prima, corresponding to modern Khirbet el-Beiyudat. It was founded by Herod the Great's son Archelaus to house workers for his date plantation in the Jericho area. It is represented on the Madaba mosaic map with a towered entrance flanked by two other towers.History
In Christian times, the town became a bishopric. The names of two of its bishops: Timotheus, who took part in two anti-Eutyches synods held in Constantinople in 448 and 449, and Antiochus, who was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
No longer a residential bishopric, Archelaïs is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
Inscriptions on the floor of a church discovered among the ruins of the town indicate that it was paved with Byzantine mosaics during the 560s.
