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Masada  The Masada Rock - view from the west Masada was Herod's royal citadel and later the last outpost of Zealots during theJewish Revolt.The citadel was a site of the most dramatic and symbolic act in Jewish history, where rebels chose masssuicide rather than submit to Roman capture.  GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION HISTORY ARCHAEOLOGY IN MASADA GETTING THERE RELATED LINKS                 Geographic description Masada is located at the top of an isolated rock on the edge of theJudean Desert and the Dead Sea valley, between Sdom and Ein Gedi.The flat top of the rock has a rhomboid shape, elongated from northto south. Its height is 440 above the Dead Sea (50 m above sea level),and it is isolated from its surroundings by deep gorges on all sides.This position forms a natural fortification, and the place is naturalto build a fortress. The access in ancient times(as Josephus describes) wasby a steep"Snake Path" from the east (from the Dead Sea), "the White Rock" fromthe west, and two approaches from north and south, all ofthem rather difficult to climb.Today there is an easy 10-minute ascent from the west, and the cable-carfrom the east. The "Snake Path" is still open for tourists wishingto use this ancient trail. History The writings of Josephus are the only significant source ofinformation about Masada. He tells that the place wasfirst fortified by "Johnatan the High Priest". Historiansdisagree whether he was referring to Judah the Maccabeeor Alexander Yannai. There is no controversy, however,about the Herodian period and the period ofthe Jewish Revolt.King Herod in 40 B.C.E fled from Jerusalem to Masada with his familyin a moment of danger. Later he fortified and furnished the citadel as a refuge fearing "a peril from Jewish people" and one "more serious from Cleopatra of Egypt". Most of Herodian buildings and fortificationswere erected apparently between 37 and 31 B.C.E.Roman garrison was probably stationed here from 6 to 66 C.E., when,at the outbreak of the Jewish War, Menahem, son of Judah the Galilean,captured Masada at the head of a band of Zealots. After Menahem wasmurdered in Jerusalem by Jewish rivals, his nephew Eleazar ben Yairescaped to Masada where he became its "tyrant" until its fall in 73 C.E.During there years Masada served as a place of refuge for all whowere in danger of capture. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Masada remained the onlypoint of Jewish resistance. Few surviving Jewish fighters thatmanaged to travel across Judean mountains joined the defenders ofMasada, and it became the rebels' base for raiding operations.In 72 C.E. the Roman governor Flavius Silva resolved to suppressthis outpost of resistance. He marched against Masada at the head of the Tenth Legion, itsauxiliary troops, and thousands of Jewish war prisoners, total tento fifteen thousand people. The troops prepared for a long siege;they established eight camps at the base of the Masada rockand surrounded it with a high wall, leaving no escape for rebels.Then Romans started to build an assault ramp to the top; thousandsof slaves, many of them Jewish, have done that in nine months.After the ramp was complete, the Romans succeeded to move the batteringram up and to direct it against the wall. They broke the stonewall, but the defenders managed to built a wall of earth and woodthat was flexible and hard to break. Eventually Romans managedto destroy it by fire, and decided to enter the fortress the next day.At night Eleazar gathered all the defenders and persuaded them to killthemselves rather than fall into the hands of Romans. The peopleset fire to their personal belongings, and then ten people chosenby a lot killed everyone else and then committed suicide. In themorning Romans entered a silent fortress and found only dead bodies.Two women and five children survived the mass suicide by hiding ina cave; they came out to Romans.Josephus describes all the dramatic details of the last hours ofthe Masada defenders as told by these survivors.A Roman garrison was stationed in Masada for some time afterthe fall. During Byzantine Period the ruins of Masada served as a retreat for monks; they also built a small church there. During Crusader Period it was inhabited. Later, the place was abandoned and its identity lost. Archaeology in Masada History of exploration.The place of the historic Masada remained unknown till 1838,when by Americans E. Robinson and E. Smith viewed the rock through a telescope from Ein-Gedi, and identified it correctly.The site was first visited by the American missionary S.W Wolcott and the English painter Tipping who was illustrating an English edition of "The Jewish War" by Josephus. Archaeological expeditions from America, France and Germany followed. In 20th century Masada became a symbol of courage for the emerging modern Jewish state. It was a pilgrimage site for youth movements and Haganah members. In 1949, at the end of War of Independence, the Israel flag was hoisted on Masada's summit. The site was inspected and explored by Shemariyahu Gutman, and in 1963 full-scale excavations began under the supervision of professor Yigael Yadin, assisted by volunteers from all over the world.The first Israeli surveys of Masada were done in 1955-56.In 1963-65 Yigael Yadin conducted a full-scale excavation of the site,with assistance of hundreds of volunteers from Israel and abroad.They uncovered almost all the territory, and also restored manybuildings. Yadin's book "Masada" tells the fascinating story ofthe excavations (I hardly refrained from typing in the whole book).Finds from pre-Herodian time.Remains of a Chalcolithic settlement (4th millennium BCE),includingplants, cloth and potsherds, were found in a small cave on the lower partof a southern cliff. Tens of coins from the reign of Alexander Yannaiwere also discovered, which makes likely that he was "Jonathan theHigh Priest", the founder of Masada.The Herodian Period.One of Herod's first undertakings was an intricate water supply system,that was of crucial importance in the arid climate of Masada. It consistedof a drainage system to carry rainwater from the two wadiswest of Masada to a group of cisterns in the northwestern slope ofthe rock. 12 huge cisterns could hold together about 40 thousand cu.m.of water.The entire summit of Masada was enclosed by Herod with acasemate wall - a double wall with the inner space dividedinto rooms. Its circumference of 1400 m. corresponds exactly to"7 stadio" in Josephus' description. About 70 rooms, 30 towers andfour gates were found in the wall.Herod constructed the most important buildings in the northern partof Masada - the highest point of the rock. Josephus gives a detailedaccount of a royal palace situated beneath the walls of the fortresson the western side facing north. Up to 1950s this was believed to bea large building on the western side of the site, but Israeli explorersdiscovered that the palace was actually located on the north where it wasdaringly constructed on the very edge of the precipice. The northernedge of the Masada rock is only two to three meters wide, and Herod'sengineers had to fashion some kind of artificial platformwith the aid of powerful supporting walls.This Northern Palace or, more correctly, royal villa, commanded a magnificent view of thesurroundings as far as Ein-Gedi. It was built in three tiers, only the upper one containing the living quarters and the lower ones designed forpleasure. The walls and ceilings were decorated with frescoes, and some of them were discovered at the lower terrace in a well-preservedstate. The frescoes imitated stone and marble covering, and even Josephusbelieved that the walls were marble covered. Frescoes in the Nortern Palace(covered with glass for protection)The excavation team sought for the best way to protect the uncoveredfrescoes from ravages of nature (and human vandalism too). After anadvice of restoration experts from Italy the paintings were detachedfrom the walls, scrape off most of the original plaster,apply instead new and strengthened backing, place each one in aspecial frame and put in place. For more than 30 years the frescoescould be seen at the site, remaining in a good condition. Lately theirstate began to deteriorate, and restoration works were renewed. InApril 1999 I saw most of the wall of the lower terrace covered withscaffolds.In addition, Herod constructed a main official palace in the western side,known as a western palace.It contained scores of rooms and installations, and was a self-sufficientunit. Its large reception hall had a magnificient richly colored mosaicpavement with circles and border ornaments of plant and geometric designs.The mosaic survived in rather good condition till our days. This palaceis the largest building found on the site.South of the Northern Palace was a large bath house built in traditionalRoman style, with four rooms and a court. The largest room, the caldarium(hot room) had a hypocaust (heating room) beneath it, and its floorstood on about 200 tiny brick columns, that were found well preserved.The walls were facedwith perforated clay pipes through which an adjacent furnace drove hot air;several pipes have survived.The public storerooms, situated east and south of the bathhouse, consistedof long narrow rooms build of large stone slabs. Before the excavationsthe storerooms could be distinguished from the air, but on the groundthey looked much as a huge pile of debris. The roofs and most of wallshad long fallen in, the result of both the intended destruction byZealots and the series of later earthquakes. The ordinary way torestore such a place would be to roll all the stones away and downthe slopes, and then start digging. The excavation teamdecided instead to restore the walls of the storehouses, and only thento dig. The excavators picked all the scattered stones and used themto restore the wall, not hoping to place stones into their originalplaces. However, when no slabs remained on the ground, the restoredwalls of all the storerooms turned out to be the same height. The original floor of the storerooms was found to be covered witha thick layer of ashes and charred beams - the clear evidence ofthe destruction done by Zealots, to prevent the supplies fromfalling into the hands of Romans. The restoration experts managedto glue most of the vessel pieces together, and could tell whatexactly was held there. Each storeroom held, exclusively,its own type of vessels: oil jars, wine jars, jars for flour;everything seemed to have been held in an exemplar order.A few storerooms were found completely empty - and this may bean evidence that Zealots had intentionally left supplies thereintact, to show Romans that they had not died just throughlack of food. Period of the Zealots. The luxurious palaces and small numberof dwelling rooms in the Herodian buildings could not be easily adaptedfor dwellings for the Zealots and were used as command postsand public buildings. Their decorative architectural parts were dismantled for building materials and furniture. The rooms and courts of the small palaces were partitioned to serve as dwellings for large numbers ofZealot families. One of the examples of a striking contrast betweenthe Herodian luxury and the poverty of Zealots. The corner ofa beautiful Herodian mosaic in the Western palace was covered byan edge of a rude stone stove or cupboard. The restorators didn't removethis humble construction, to leave the evidence of that contrast.Most of the Zealots were housed in the double walland in shacks of mud and small stones adjoining the wall and buildings.In rooms that had not been burnt remains of their daily life werestrewn of floors: clothing, leather, baskets, glass, stone andbronze objects; some rooms looked as if they had just been abandoned.In the sector of the wall close to the assault ramp there werefound hundreds of Romanballistic stones the size of grapefruit.Two mikveh were found in the northern and thesouthern corners of Masada.First tree adjacent pools were found, with a water conduitbringing rainwater into them, at the southern end of Masada.This structure seemed very likely to be a mikve, filled with anatural water, as prescribed by the Halakhic rules.When the news about the find were announced, the orthodoxTalmudic scholars became especially interested - no mikve had so farbeen discovered belonging to the very period when these Halakhicrules were written. Two Rabbis, both very respected specialists,arrived to Masada and climbed the hard Snake path under the broiling sun -especially to visit the find. They went into the pools and started tocheck their measures. The archaeologists hold their breath - and at theend of a thorough study the Rabbis announced that it was indeed themikve excellently meeting all the standards.In the north-western corner of Masada a synagoguewas discovered,at that time the earliest known one, and the only one from the timeof the Second Temple. It is a rectangular building, oriented toward Jerusalem, with four tiers of plastered benchesalong the walls and two rows of columns in the center. In a corner wasa room for ritual objects. The building was constructed by Zealots,on the base of the earlier Herodian construction. It is possible thatthe building served as a synagogue also in Herodian period; he hadenough Jewish family members to care for their place of worship.More than 700 ostraca were found,mostly written in Hebrew or Aramaic.Some of them were found near the storerooms, and may have been connectedwith the Zealot's rationing system during the siege. Eleven small ostracawere found, different from all other found, each inscribed apparently by the same hand, with a single name; one of the names is"Ben Yair". It is probable that those were the ostraca used in thecasting of the lots between Ben Yair and the surviving ten people,after all the others had been killed, as Josephus describes.Parts of 14 biblical, apocryphal and sectarian scrolls found at Masadaare the first scrolls discovered outside of caves in a dated archaeological stratum. The biblical scrolls are mostly identical with Masoretic textsbut some show slight variations. One important find was a sectariandocument identical with one found in Qumran, and using a 364-day calendarused also by a Dead Sea Sect. This was a proof that the Dead Sea Scrollswere dated correctly. Another important scroll was the original of"The wisdom of Ben-Sira", an apocryph of the 2nd century; its Greektranslation was knows as "Ecclesiasticus". Since this text was notincluded in the Tanakh, the original Hebrew text was lost; excerptsfrom it were found only in 1896 in the Cairo Geniza. The find inMasada had opened a new chapter in the research of that book. Finds from the Bysantine Period. A small Bysantine chapel was found on the site, constructed by monksin 5th century CE. Once its floor had been covered by mosaic; most ofit had been robbed before the excavations. However, in a small chamber,where the floor was covered with high piles of debris, a beautifulsection of a mosaic floor was uncovered. Nearby a Bysantine workshop formosaic was found, containing a number of long and thin stones, fromwhich the little stones for mosaic were cut.The monks apparently dwelt in nearby caves and in several stonecells constructed at the site. Before the monks came to Masada,series of earthquakes struck the area, and the cells were builtover the ruins of damaged buildings. Getting there The access to Masada from the east is by Road 90 going from Sdom toJericho along the Dead Sea. Some 18 km south of Ein-Gedi,25 km north of the Zohar River mouth, the road turns toward Masada (2 km)ending at the parking lot at the foot of the mountain. From therethe ascent is either by the cable car, or by walking upthe Snake Path - a moderate climb which should take 45-60 minutes.The western road to Masada (Road 3199) starts in Arad and is 22 km. long.It ends at the western parking lot. It takes 15-20 minutes of easy ascentto get to the top. References:Yigael Yadin, "Masada"Encyclopedia Judaica Related links Josephus, "The Jewish War" - a chapter describing the siege of Masada(he was not always objective ...) Masada -Desert Fortress Overlooking the Dead Sea at the IsraeliMinistry of Foreign AffairsHistory of Masada at Virtual Reality Education Foundation Donald D. Binder, "Masada."- a page from Ph.D. Thesis studying the Second Temple synagoguesMasada Page at Metayel's site.T O PTHE UNOFFICIAL GUIDERosh Ha-Niqra -- Banyas -- Gamla -- Qumran -- The Western WallMasada -- Ein-Avdat -- Avdat -- Ramon Crater -- EilatROADSIDE VISTASISRAELI LINKSMOSAIC HOME |
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