Machaerus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Machaerus is a fortress fifteen miles southeast of the mouth of the Jordan river, in the wild and desolate hills that overlook the Dead Sea from the east. The fortress was originally built by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (104 BC-78 BC) in about the year 90 BC (Josephus, Wars 7.6.2). It was destroyed by Pompey's general Gabinius in 57 BC (Wars 1.8.5), but later rebuilt by Herod the Great. When Herod the Great died, it passed into the hands of Herod Antipas, and his foreign relations with Nabatea made the place, strategically oriented in the direction of Nabatea, of special importance to him. After the death of Herod Antipas (AD 39), the tetrarchy was given over to Herod Agrippa I, who then ruled over Machaerus. After Agrippa's death (AD 44), however, the Romans occupied the country, and only in AD 68 early in the First Jewish Revolt were the Jews of the village of Machaerus able to dispossess the Roman garrison and occupy the fortress (Wars 2.18.6). Finally, after the destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70), Lucilius Bassus, the new Roman commander and governor of Iudaea, having first easily defeated the Jewish garrison at Herodium (AD 71), besieged, took, and destroyed Machaerus (AD 72).
Josephus gives a full description of Machaerus at Wars 7.6.1 ff. The site had great natural strength, being a rocky eminence entrenched on all sides within dep ravines. The vally on the west extands sixty stadia to Lake Asphaltitis, as Josephus calls the Dead Sea; the valley on the east falls away to a depth of a hundred cubits (150 feet). Particularly because of its proximity to Arabia, Herod the Great regarded the place as deserving the strongest fortification. He enclosed an extensive area with ramparts and towers and founded a city; on top of the mountain, surrounding the crest, he built a wall with corner towers each sixty cubits (90 feet) high, and in the center of the enclosure he built a magnificent palace. At convenient spots numerous cisterns were provided to collect rain water.
In Arabic the ruins of the Machaerus fortress are called Qalat el-Mishnaqa and the village on the plateau to the east of the mountain is known as Meqawer or Mukawir. The site was visited in 1807 by the German explorer Ulrich Seetzen, and the name of the village reminded him of the name of Machaerus in Greek. The archaeological excavation of Machaerus was begun in 1968 by Jerry Vardaman, then of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, and later director of the Cobb Institute of Archaeology, Mississippi State University; in 1973 the German scholar August Strobel identified and studied the wall of circumvallation by which the Romans encircled the defenders within the fortress; and in 1978-1981 excavations were carried out by Virgilio Corbo, together with Stanislao Loffreda and Michele Piccirillo, all of the Franciscan Biblical Institute, Jerusalem.
On the summit of the hill, 1100 meters above the level of the Dead Sea, the area of the fortress is about 100 meters long and 60 meters wide and is surrounded by a polygonal wall, strengthened by three large rectangular towers. The towers and at least part of the wall were built by the Hasmoneans, but meany of the structures were reused in the Herodian period. Within the fortified area are the ruins of the Herodian palace, including rooms, a large courtyard, and an elaborate bath, with fragments of the floor mosaic still remaining. Farther down the eastern slope of the hill are other walls and towers, perhaps representing the "lower town," of which Josephus also speaks (Wars 7.6.4). Traceable also, coming from the east, is the aqueduct that brought water to the cisterns of the fortres. Pottery found in the area extends from Late Hellenistic to Roman and confirms the two main periods of occupation, namely, Hasmonean (90 BC-57 BC) and Herodian (30 BC-AD 72), with a brief reoccupation soon after AD 72 and then nothing further—so complete and systematic was the destruction visited upon the site by the Romans.
[edit] External Links
- Machaerus, article in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith
