Masada

Israel / Hadarom / Arad /
 fortification, historic ruins, tourist attraction
Masada is located atop an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea.
On the east side, the rock falls in a sheer drop of about 450 meters (~1476 feet) to the Dead Sea and on the western edge it stands about 100 meters (~328 feet) above the surrounding terrain. The natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult.

The only written source about Masada is Josephus Flavius’ The Jewish War. Born Joseph ben Matityahu into a priestly family, Flavius was a young leader at the outbreak of the Great Jewish Rebellion against Rome (66 CE) when he was appointed governor of Galilee. Calling himself Josephus Flavius, he became a Roman citizen and a successful historian.

According to Flavius, Herod the Great built the fortress of Masada between 37 and 31 BCE. Herod, an Idumean, had been made King of Judea by his Roman overlords and “furnished this fortress as a refuge for himself.” It included a casemate wall around the plateau, storehouses, large cisterns ingeniously filled with rainwater, barracks, palaces and an armory.

Some 75 years after Herod’s death, at the beginning of the Revolt of the Jews against the Romans in 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels overcame the Roman garrison of Masada. After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) they were joined by zealots and their families who had fled from Jerusalem. There, they held out for three years, raiding and harassing the Romans.

Then, in 73 CE, Roman governor Flavius Silva marched against Masada with the Tenth Legion, auxiliary units and thousands of Jewish prisoners-of-war. The Romans established camps at the base of Masada, laid siege to it and built a circumvallation wall. 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 battering ram up the ramp and breached the wall of the fortress.

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.

Elazar’s final speech clearly was a masterful oration:

"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." www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=external&v=421780191817...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHcpPJzfrfQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xGOIy1Yjr8
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   31°18'58"N   35°21'14"E

Comments

  • Definitely worth the trip. Recommend taking the cable cars up and walking back down.
  • I, on the other hand, recommend taking the cable cars up *and* down, because I'm lazy like that! :P