Masada - Sun., 4/12/08

We got a few minutes on free wi-fi while we wait at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. So, I'll take a few minutes to tell about our experience at Masada.

Masada is a fortress built high on top of a mountain in the Judean Desert. It was built by Herod the Great around 30 BC as a place to escape to if the need should arise. Later, around 65 AD it was occupied for a few years by a group of Jews escaping the Romans in Jerusalem. Other than that, this site has never been occupied.

We took the cable car up but it would have been more fun (I think) to take the 40 minute hike up the side of the mountain. You can see it snaking up the side of the mountain to the right.


The fortress consistes of not one, but two, palaces for Herod, one of which had a swimming pool and hot and cold showers. How do you get enough water to even drink, let alone fill an entire swimming pool in the desert. In the desert it doesn't rain often but when it does it rains hard for a short time causing flash floods. Herod designed and had built an elaborate system that collected the flood waters from as far as two mountains away towards the west and fed it all into one of three different cisterns. It also had living quarters, a synagogue, and ten or more food storage rooms, each of which was probably 10' x 100'.


Although the entire fortress was built out of the local rock, Herod was never one to skimp on beauty. His palaces were elaborately painted and tiled, the remains of which can still be seen today. Here is a picture of some of the painting on one of the walls. It remains to this day because it hasn't been exposed to the elements and is in such a dry environment.




The mountain was surrounded by a 30 foot wall and eight different soldiers camps outside the walls. These structures can still be seen clearly except they have just crumbled to the ground. They lay in piles right where they once stood. The soldier camps are the square structures and the wall is the 45 degree line running through the middle of the picture.


The Romans weren't able to cut off their water supply or wait it out until they starved to death so they built a ramp, attacked and conquered the city. Due to the writings of Josephus it is most commonly believed that the men killed their wives and children before killing themselves rather than be taken into slavery. There is a little bit of controversy around this theory (as there is with everything in Israel) and it is also possible that they fought but were completely annihilated by the Romans. Either way they met with a tragic end.