Masada
May 12, 2017
Masada seen from below:
Display photograph of Schmariyahu Gutmann, the general who captures Masada from the Jordanians and who happened to be the great uncle of our guide, Ofer.
Many thanks to Wikipedia and the Jewish Virtual Library.
Masada means "fortress." Herod the Great built the fortress of Masada between 37 and 31 BCE. Herod had been made King of Judea by his Roman overlords and furnished this fortress as a refuge for himself with elaborate castles for his enjoyment.
On the northern edge of the steep cliff, with a splendid view, stood the elegant, intimate, private palace-villa of the king. It was separated from the fortress by a wall, affording total privacy and security. This northern palace consists of three terraces, luxuriously built, with a narrow, rock-cut staircase connecting them. On the upper terrace, several rooms served as living quarters; in front of them is a semi-circular balcony with two concentric rows of columns. The rooms were paved with black and white mosaics in geometric patterns.
Remains of the second terrace:
The lower terrace, a place to socialize:
A storehouse complex on top of Masada consisted of two rows of long halls opening onto a central corridor. The floor of the storerooms was covered with thick plaster and the roofing consisted of wooden beams covered with hard plaster. Here, large numbers of broken storage jars which once contained large quantities of oil, wine, grains and other foodstuffs were found.
A large bathhouse, elaborately built, probably served the guests and senior officials of Masada. It consisted of a large courtyard surrounded by porticos and several rooms, all with mosaic or tiled floors and some with frescoed walls. The courtyard is shown in this model:
The largest of the rooms was the hot room (caldarium). Its suspended floor was supported by rows of low pillars, making it possible to blow hot air from the furnace outside, under the floor and through clay pipes along the walls, to heat the room to the desired temperature.
Water was critical for Masada. Herod built a remarkable collection system starting with streams and dams on the adjacent slopes, which would collect rainwater during storms and transport it via two aqueducts shown on the model below and deposit in into a series of cisterns on the slopes of Masada.
Convoys of animals would haul this water up to cisterns at the top for ready storage:
The synagogue, part of the Herodian construction, was a hall incorporated into the northwestern section of the casemate wall and oriented towards Jerusalem. This synagogue also served the Jews who lived in Masada during the Revolt. They built four tiers of plastered benches along the walls, as well as columns to support its ceiling.
It is useful to view some of the remaining defensive walls of Masada:
The ground floor of one of three watchtowers was a dovecote with hundreds of niches where doves roosted. They were a major food source, and they may also have been used as messenger birds.
The siege of Masada was one of the final events in the First Jewish–Roman War, occurring from 73 to 74 CE. The siege was chronicled by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish rebel leader captured by the Romans, in whose service he became a historian. According to Josephus the long siege by the troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of the Sicarii rebels and resident Jewish families of the Masada fortress. The siege of Masada has become a controversial event in Jewish history, with some regarding it as a place of reverence, commemorating fallen ancestors and their heroic struggle against oppression, and others regarding it as a warning against extremism and the refusal to compromise. President Trump will speak in Masada during his forthcoming trip to Israel.
In 66 CE, at the beginning of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire, an extremist Jewish splinter group called the Sicarii, who were equally antagonistic to both Romans and other Jewish groups, overcame the Roman garrison of Masada and settled there. Shortly thereafter, following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and subsequent destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, additional members of the Sicarii and many Jewish families fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountaintop.
Then, in 73 CE, Roman governor Flavius Silva marched against Masada with the Tenth Legion. The Romans established several camps at the base of Masada connected by a fortified wall, laid siege to it and built a defensive wall connecting them.
They then constructed a rampart of thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth against the western approaches of the fortress and, in the spring of 74 CE, moved a tower with a battering ram up the ramp and breached the wall of the fortress as demonstrated by this illustration.
Once it became apparent that the Tenth Legion's battering rams and catapults would succeed in breaching Masada's walls, Elazar ben Yair - the Zealots’ leader - decided that all the Jewish defenders should commit suicide; the alternative facing the fortress’s defenders were hardly more attractive than death.
Flavius dramatically recounts the story told him by two surviving women. The defenders – almost one thousand men, women and children – led by ben Yair, burnt down the fortress and killed each other. The Zealots cast lots to choose 10 men to kill the remainder. They then chose among themselves the one man who would kill the survivors. That last Jew then killed himself.
This photo shows our tour group sitting in the room where the lots were cast and learning the sad history.
Elazar’s final speech:
"Since we long ago resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God Himself, Who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice ...We were the very first that revolted, and we are the last to fight against them; and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God has granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom."
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