Mt. Carmel Moments: Masada - An Amazing Place With a Tragic Story

Bedouin Camps South of Jerusalem

Masada towers over the rest of the Judean desert.

If you travel south out of Jerusalem, the terrain changes very quickly. The city and forested terrain drop away and the land becomes barren. Bedouin camps appear among the sandy hills. You are entering the desert of Judea and are on the way to Masada and the Dead Sea.

Today you can hike up the Snake Path or take
a cable car to the top of Masada

Masada, what an interesting place, with a tragic story! Masada is a huge and isolated plateau about 90 minutes south of Jerusalem. It sits on the Eastern edge of the Judean desert and overlooks the Dead Sea, towering 1300 feet on one side and 3000 feet on the other. It was first used in a limited way by the Hasmonean king, Alexander Jannaeus, during the first century B.C. It was then captured by Herod the Great who decided to used his formidable construction skills to build a royal city there in three phases. The first phase included a large palace on the western side along with three smaller palaces, some towers and a swimming pool. (Yes, you read that right - a swimming pool!) There were also storage rooms and an army barracks. In the second phase Herod added more storage rooms and the magnificent Northern Palace, a construction marvel that literally cascades down the end of the plateau. In the third phase, about ten years later, the entire top of Masada, except for the Northern palace, was enclosed in a casement wall. The wall was a double wall which provided living quarters for soldiers and servants and more storage. There was also a dovecote, huge cisterns that could collect enough water for the entire year from the one or two rains that fall, as well as room for growing crops and grazing animals. The whole plateau was accessed by means of a snake path which still is in use today.

A model shows us what Harod's luxurious
Northern Palace must have looked like.

Looking Down on the Ruins of
The Northern Palace today.

One has to ask why Herod built such an amazing and luxurious city in such a remote place, There are two reasons: first he loved to build impressive places to exhibit to guests. Masada was only one of a number of his efforts, among them the Second Temple, Caesarea, and Herodium, which was near the city of Jericho. He spent as little time as possible in Jerusalem, preferring to escape the city's turmoil for one of his other palaces. Also, he was an evil, paranoid king with many enemies. Masada was and is remote and easily defended so, in the event of a threat to his rule, he had a secure and luxurious place to which he could escape.

Restored painting gives us a look at Herod's
design taste.

Beautiful mosaics adorned the
floors of Herod's palaces.

The tragic end of ancient Masada occurred several years after Jerusalem and the Second Temple were leveled by the legions of Rome under the command of Flavius Silva. According to the historian Josephus a band of Jewish Zealots called Sicarii led by Eleazar Ben Ya'ir escaped to Masada and managed to overcome the Roman garrison and then take up residence there. In time, the number of Jews on Masada grew to almost 1000 men, women and children. However the Zealots were not content to live peacefully on Masada but raided nearby Jewish villages where they murdered inhabitants and pillaged their belongings as well as harassed Roman troops.

Looking Down Into One of the Large Cisterns on Masada

The remains of Roman camps are clearly
visible from the top of Massada.

Huge catapults rained down large rock
projectiles on Masada.

In 73 A.D. Flavius Silva laid siege to Masada to take care of the problem of the zealots. However, due to the almost impregnable nature of the plateau that was not a task easily accomplished. It took the Tenth Legion three years, 15,000 troops, Jewish prisoners and the construction of a massive siege ramp to finally be able to reach the wall and breach it using battering rams. The morning after breaching the wall, the Romans entered Masada prepared to finish off the Zealots. Instead they found that the Zealots had burned the food storage rooms and then committed mass suicide rather than become the slaves of Rome. Josephus states that only two women and five children lived to tell the Romans what had happened and that 960 bodies were found. Archaeologists have found ostraca (pottery shards) bearing the names of ten men (one of them Ben Ya'ir) which are thought to be lots used by the men who killed the others and then each other, leaving the last to kill himself.

The Remains of the Siege Ramp That the Romans
Built to Breech the Wall of Masada

Ostraca found in a store room with the names
of zealots probably were used to draw lots that
final night.

Masada's site was identified in 1842 and excavated between 1963 and 1965 by prominent archaeologist Yigael Yadin. Due to its remote location much of the ruins of Masada remained, including a good portion of the Roman attack ramp. The sites of Roman camps all around Masada are clearly visible. Inside the Synagogue portions of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel were found in pits dug in the floor of a small side room and portions of Genesis, Leviticus and Psalms were found elsewhere. In addition there are the remains of a Byzantine church from the 5th and 6th centuries. Much of the ruins of Masada have been restored and are a fascinating place to visit today. One can still climb the snake path to the top or take the cable car from the modern visitors center. (One word of caution! Try to visit in the cooler weather though, as it was 118.4 degrees on the top of Masada during one of our visits. Dry heat or not, that is hot!!!)

Today Masada is also used for the swearing-in ceremony of soldiers who have completed their basic training in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). The soldiers climb the snake path at night and take their oath by torchlight. The ceremony always ends with the declaration "Masada shall not fall again".