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Where it's at
Sitting on a desert plateau overlooking the Dead Sea in Israel
is Masada, the most visited archeological site in Israel
and a popular climb, either from the Dead Sea in the east
or the steep "snake path" from the west.
Masada, Hebrew for "fortress", is a naturally created
safe house, separated from the mountains by two deep gorges,
with a sheer drop into the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth.
History of Masada
Originally Masada was built as a palace by Herod the Great
and it's probably one of the most interesting archaeological
digs in the country. It was the king's luxury summerhouse
with steam baths and water cisterns in a luxury mountain resort.
In 66AD Masada was captured by a small group of Jews resisting
the Roman Empire who were later joined by a group of Zealots
fleeing Jerusalem. Six years later, an army of 15,000 sieged
Masada and built a wall around the base of the mountain. The
zealot Jews could survive for a long time on their immense
food and water reserves, but the 977 men, women and children
chose an honourable death by their own hands rather than slaughtered
by Romans. Their leader, Eleazar Ben Yair, ordered
10 men to kill the others 967, then one to kill the other
nine elected by the people, then he killed himself. However,
one man, Josephus Flavius, managing to escape the suicide
pact and defected to the other side, becoming a Roman citizen
and historian, chronicling the story of Masada in his book
"The Jewish War".
Eleven small ostraca were uncovered during excavation, showing
the names of Ben Yair, the Zealot leader and ten other men,
thought to be the ten suicide slaughterers. The Masada community
set fire to the whole fortress bar the stores, to show the
Romans it was not hunger that led them to give up.
Architecture of Masada
The original fortress was made of thick dolomite stone covered
in plaster to keep cool in the hot, hot desert. It consisted
of storerooms, living quarters, administrative buildings,
an Underground cistern a palace, bathhouse, synagogue, throne
room and Herod's palace-villa - the king's equivalent of a
summer house.
The siege of Masada has been adopted as a symbol for the
modern State of Israel with the oath that 'Masada shall not
fall again", so the recent theory that the events never
happened is not welcome in Israel. Masada is a symbol of freedom
and independence to the Jewish world and determination to
die for their beliefs and to remain strong in the face of
adversity is a philosophy which has allowed Judaism to survive
for so long, particularly during the twentieth century and
the atrocities of the Holocaust. Recruits of the Israel Defence
Forces Armoured Unit swear their oath of allegiance in an
annual ceremony on Masada's summit.
The mystery of finding the ruins of Masada enticed many a
traveller to the Judean desert, and it was identified in 1842
and later excavated in the 1960s and has since become a national
tourist attraction.
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