Masada

Masada ( ', 'fortress'; ) is a mountain-top fortress complex in the Judaean Desert, overlooking the western shore of the Dead Sea in southeastern Israel. The fort, built in the first century BCE, was constructed atop a natural plateau rising over above the surrounding terrain, east of modern Arad.

The most significant remains at the site date to the reign of Herod the Great, King of Judaea c. 37–4 BCE, who transformed Masada into a fortified desert refuge early in his rule. He enclosed the summit with a casemate wall and towers, and constructed storerooms, an advanced water system, and bathhouses, along with two elaborate palaces: one on the western side and another built across three terraces on the northern cliff. These palaces remain among the finest examples of Herodian architecture.

Masada is most renowned for its role during the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), when it became the final holdout of Jewish rebels following the destruction of Jerusalem. A group known as the Sicarii, a radical faction led by Eleazar ben Ya'ir, defended the site against the Roman Tenth Legion under Lucius Flavius Silva. The Romans laid siege by building a circumvallation wall and a massive ramp. According to Josephus, when the walls were breached in 73/74 CE, the Romans found nearly 1,000 inhabitants had died by mass suicide—a claim that remains debated among historians. In modern times, the story of Masada was interpreted as a symbol of heroism that became influential in early Israeli national identity.

Excavations led by archaeologist Yigael Yadin in the 1960s uncovered remarkably preserved remains, including Herod's palaces, storerooms with food remnants, ritual baths, a synagogue, chapel, columbaria, scrolls, and pottery shards bearing names, one inscribed "ben Ya'ir," possibly linked to the final days of the defenders. The surrounding Roman siege works and bases remain visible and are among the most intact examples of Roman military engineering. Today, Masada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Israel's most popular tourist attractions,Most popular during 2008; . drawing around 750,000 visitors a year.

Geography

The cliff of Masada is, geologically speaking, a horst. As the plateau abruptly ends in cliffs steeply falling about to the east and about to the west, the natural approaches to the fortress are very difficult to navigate. The top of the mesa-like plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about by . Herod built a high casemate wall around the plateau totaling in length, reinforced by many towers. The fortress contained storehouses, barracks, an armory, a palace, and a series of cisterns (capacity around 40,000 cubic metres) that were refilled by rainwater – with the runoff collected from a single day's rain allegedly able to sustain over 1,000 people for 2 to 3 years. Three narrow, winding paths led from below up to fortified gates.

History

Almost all historical information about Masada comes from the first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus. Masada is also mentioned in the Judean Desert Documents.

Hasmonean fortress

Josephus writes that the site was first fortified by Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BCE. However, so far no Hasmonean-period building remains could be identified during archaeological excavations.

Josephus further writes that Herod the Great captured it in the power struggle that followed the death of his father Antipater in 43 BCE. It survived the siege of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II Mattathias, who ruled with Parthian support.

Herodian palace-fortress

According to Josephus, between 37 and 31 BCE, Herod the Great built a large fortress on the plateau as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt and erected two palaces with an endless food supply.

First Jewish–Roman War

In 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels, the Sicarii, overcame the Roman garrison of Masada with the aid of a ruse. According to Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist Jewish splinter group antagonistic to a larger grouping of Jews referred to as the Zealots, who carried the main burden of the rebellion. Josephus said that the Sicarii raided nearby Jewish villages including Ein Gedi, where they massacred 700 women and children.

In 73 CE, the Roman governor of Iudaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, headed the Roman legion X ''Fretensis'' and laid siege to Masada. Another source gives the year of the siege of Masada as 73 or 74 CE. The Roman legion surrounded Masada, building a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. According to Dan Gill, geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m (375 ft) high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock.

The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. The Romans employed the X Legion and a number of auxiliary units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000, of whom an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 were fighting men, in crushing Jewish resistance at Masada.

A giant siege tower with a battering ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp. According to Josephus, when Roman troops entered the fortress, they discovered that its defenders had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and committed mass suicide or killed each other, 960 men, women, and children in total. Josephus wrote of two stirring speeches that the Sicari leader had made to convince his men to kill themselves. Only two women and five children were found alive.

Josephus presumably based his narration upon the field commentaries of the Roman commanders that were accessible to him.

There are discrepancies between archaeological findings and Josephus' writings. Josephus mentions only one of the two palaces that have been excavated, refers only to one fire, though many buildings show fire damage, and claims that 960 people were killed, though the remains of at most 28 bodies have been found. Some of the other details that Josephus gives were correct – for instance, he describes the baths that were built there, the fact that the floors in some of the buildings 'were paved with stones of several colours', and that many pits were cut into the living rock to serve as cisterns. Yadin found some partially intact mosaic floors which meet that description.

Byzantine monastery of Marda

Masada was last occupied during the Byzantine period, when a small church was established at the site. The church was part of a monastic settlement identified with the monastery of Marda known from hagiographical literature. This identification is generally accepted by researchers. The Aramaic common noun ''marda'', "fortress", corresponds in meaning to the Greek name of another desert monastery of the time, Kastellion, and is used to describe that site in the ''vita'' (biography) of St Sabbas, but it is used as a proper name only for the monastery at Masada, as can be seen from the ''vita'' of St Euthymius.

Archaeology

Chalcolithic period

An almost inaccessible cave, dubbed Yoram Cave, located on the sheer southern cliff face 100 m below the plateau, has been found to contain numerous plant remains, of which 6,000-year-old barley seeds were in such good state of preservation that their genome could be sequenced. This is the first time that this succeeded with a Chalcolithic plant genome, which is also the oldest one sequenced so far. The result helped determine that the earliest domestication of barley, dated elsewhere in the Fertile Crescent to 10,000 years ago, happened further north up the Jordan Rift Valley, namely in the Upper Jordan Valley in northern Israel.

The Yoram Cave seeds were found to be fairly different from the wild variety, proof for an already advanced process of domestication, but very similar to the types of barley still cultivated in the region—an indication for remarkable constancy. Considering the difficulty in reaching the cave, whose mouth opens some 4 m above the exposed access path, the researchers have speculated that it was a place of short-term refuge for Chalcolithic people fleeing an unknown catastrophe.

Identification and initial digs

The site of Masada was identified in 1838 by Americans Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, and in 1842, American missionary Samuel W. Wolcott and the English painter W. Tipping were the first moderns to climb it. After visiting the site several times in the 1930s and 1940s, Shmarya Guttman conducted an initial probe excavation of the site in 1959.

Yigael Yadin expedition

Masada was extensively excavated between 1963 and 1965 by an expedition led by Israeli archaeologist and former military Chief-of-Staff Yigael Yadin.

Due to the remoteness from human habitation and its arid environment, the site remained largely untouched by humans or nature for two millennia.

Many of the ancient buildings have been restored from their remains, as have the wall paintings of Herod's two main palaces, and the Roman-style bathhouses that he built. The synagogue, storehouses, and houses of the Jewish rebels have also been identified and restored.

Water cisterns two-thirds of the way up the cliff drain the nearby wadis by an elaborate system of channels, which explains how the rebels managed to conserve enough water for such a long time.

The Roman attack ramp still stands on the western side and can be climbed on foot. The meter-high circumvallation wall that the Romans built around Masada can be seen, together with eight Roman siege camps just outside this wall. The Roman siege installations as a whole, especially the attack ramp, are the best preserved of their kind, and the reason for declaring Masada a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Due to the great interest shown by the public, Yadin published a book in 1966 for the general public, "מצדה" ("Masada").

Epigraphic findings

Inside the synagogue, an ostracon bearing the inscription ''ma'aser cohen'' (, tithe for the priest) was found, as were fragments of two scrolls: parts of Deuteronomy and of the Book of Ezekiel including the vision of the "dry bones" ( and ), found hidden in pits dug under the floor of a small room built inside the synagogue. In other loci, fragments were found of the books of Genesis, Leviticus, Psalms, and Sirach, as well as of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

In the area in front of the Northern Palace, 11 small ostraca were recovered, each bearing a single name. One reads "ben Ya'ir" () and could be short for Eleazar ben Ya'ir, the commander of the fortress. The other 10 names may be those of the men chosen by lot to kill the others and then themselves, as recounted by Josephus.

Human remains

The remains of a maximum of 28 people were unearthed at Masada, possibly 29 including a foetus. James D. Tabor
Masada: Cave 2000/2001
on the website "The Jewish Roman World of Jesus", University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Posted no earlier than October 1994, accessed February 2019. The skeletal remains of 25 individuals were found in a cave outside and below the southern wall. The remains of another two males and a female were found in the bathhouse of the Northern Palace.

Of the bathhouse remains, the males were variously estimated to have been of an age of either 40 and 20–22, or 22 and 11–12, or based on dental remains, between 16–18 of age. One estimate for the female's age was 17–18 years. The skeletal remains of the males were incomplete. Only the hair, a full head of hair with braids, but no bones of the female were found.

Forensic analysis showed the hair had been shaved from the woman's head with a sharp instrument while she was still alive, a practice prescribed for captured women in the Bible () and the 2nd-century BCE Temple Scroll. The braids indicate that she was married. Based on the evidence, anthropologist Joe Zias and forensic scientist Azriel Gorski believe the remains may have been Romans whom the rebels captured when they seized the garrison.
Joseph (Joe) Zias and Azriel Gorski
Capturing a Beautiful Woman at Masada
Near Eastern Archaeology (NEA) (69:1), 2006, pp. 45–48.

As to the sparse remains of 24 people found in the southern cave at the base of the cliff, excavator Yigael Yadin was unsure of their ethnicity. The rabbinical establishment concluded that they were remains of the Jewish defenders, and in July 1969, they were reburied as Jews in a state ceremony. Carbon dating of textiles found with the remains in the cave indicate they are contemporaneous with the period of the revolt, and pig bones were present, occasionally occurring for Roman burials due to pig sacrifices. This indicates that the remains may belong to non-Jewish Roman soldiers or civilians who occupied the site before or after the siege. Zias questioned whether as many as 24 individuals were present, since only 4% of that number of bones was recovered.

Roman-period palm seed

A 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seed discovered during archaeological excavations in the early 1960s was successfully germinated into a date plant, popularly known as " Methuselah" after the longest-living figure in the Hebrew Bible

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases