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Siege of Masada

Masada National Park

Date	Late 72 – early 73 CE
Location	Masada in modern-day eastern Israel 31°18′55″N, 35°21′13″E
Result	Roman victory

Belligerents

Commanders

Strength

960

15,000

Casualties and losses

953

Unknown

Masada*
UNESCO World Heritage Site

Type	Cultural
Criteria	iii, iv, vi
Reference	1040
Region†	Europe and North America
Inscription history
Inscription	2001 (25th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO.

Masada (a romanisation of the Hebrew מצדה, Metzada, from מצודה, metzuda, "fortress") is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel on top of an isolated rock plateau, or large mesa, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada became famous after the First Jewish-Roman War (also known as the Great Jewish Revolt) when a siege of the fortress by troops of the Roman Empire led to a mass suicide of the site's Jewish Sicarii fugitives when defeat became imminent. Today, Masada is a very popular tourist destination.

1 Geography
2 History
3 Masada today
4 Citations
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Geography

The cliffs on the east edge of Masada are about 1,300 feet high and the cliffs on the west are about 300 feet high; the natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult. The top of the plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about 1,800 by 900 feet. There was a casemate wall around the top of the plateau totaling 4,300 feet long and 12 foot thick with many towers, and the fortress included storehouses, barracks, an armory, the palace, and cisterns that were refilled by rainwater. Three narrow, winding paths led from below to fortified gates.

[edit] History

According to Josephus, a first-century Jewish Roman historian, Herod the Great fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt. In 66 CE, at the beginning of the First Jewish-Roman War against the Roman Empire, a group of Judaic extremist rebels called the Sicarii took Masada from the Roman garrison stationed there. The works of Josephus are contested, but nevertheless as the sole record of events that took place then, according to Josephus the Sicarii were an extremist group. Even though they too rebelled against Rome, they were antagonistic to other Jewish groups including the Zealots (kana'im, "zealous ones"), and used murder and pillage to achieve their ends. According to modern interpretations of Josephus, the Sicarii are considered an extremist splinter group of the Zealots.^[1] The Zealots (according to Josephus) in contrast to the Sicarii, carried the main burden of the rebellion, which opposed Roman rule of Judea (as the Roman province of Iudaea, its Latin name).

The Sicarii on Masada were commanded by Elazar ben Ya'ir (who may have been the same person as Eleazar ben Simon) and in 70, they were joined by additional Sicarii and their families that were expelled from Jerusalem by the other Jews with whom the Sicarii were in conflict shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. For the next two years (according to Josephus) the Sicarii used Masada as their base for raiding and pillaging Roman and Jewish settlements alike. Archaeology indicates that they modified some of the structures they found there; this includes a building which was modified to function as a synagogue facing Jerusalem, (in fact, the building may originally have been one), although it did not contain a mikvah or the benches found in other early synagogues.^[2] Remains of two mikvahs were found elsewhere on Masada.

Remnants of one of several legionary camps at Masada, just outside the circumvallation wall which can be seen next to it.

In 72 CE, the Roman governor of Iudaea Lucius Flavius Silva marched against Masada with the Roman legion X Fretensis and laid siege to the fortress. After failed attempts to breach the wall, they built a circumvallation wall and then a rampart against the western face of the plateau, using thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth. Josephus does not record any major attempts by the Sicarii to counterattack the besiegers during this process, a significant difference from his accounts of other sieges against Jewish fortresses, suggesting that perhaps the Sicarii lacked the equipment to fight the Roman legion.

Some historians also believe that Romans may have used Jewish slaves to build the rampart, whom the Zealots (these historians see them as Zealots rather than Sicarii) were reluctant to kill because of their beliefs. According to Dan Gill,^[3] geological observations in the early 1990s revealed that the assault ramp consists mostly of natural bedrock, which would have diminished both the scope of the construction and the putative conflict between the "Zealots" and Jews enslaven by the Romans.

The ramp seen from the top.

The rampart was complete in the spring of 73, after approximately two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16.^{[citation needed]} When they entered the fortress, however, the Romans discovered that its 936 inhabitants had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and committed mass suicide rather than face certain capture or defeat by their enemies (which would probably have led to slavery or execution). Because Judaism strongly discourages suicide, however, Josephus reported that the defenders had drawn lots and killed each other in turn, down to the last man, who would be the only one to actually take his own life. The storerooms were apparently left standing to show that the defenders retained the ability to live, and chose the time of their death over slavery. This account of the siege of Masada was related to Josephus by two women who survived the suicide by hiding inside a cistern along with five children, and repeated Elazar ben Yair's final exhortation to his followers, prior to the mass suicide, verbatim to the Romans.

[edit] Masada today

View from the top of Masada

Platform access to the fortress

The site of Masada was identified in 1842 and extensively excavated between 1963 and 1965 by an expedition led by Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin. A pair of cable cars now carry those visitors who do not wish to climb the ancient, now restored, Snake Path, on the eastern side of the mountain (access via the Dead Sea road). Due to the remoteness from human habitation and its arid environment, the site has remained largely untouched by humans or nature during the past two millennia. The Roman ramp still stands on the western side and can be climbed on foot. 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. The meter-high circumvallation wall that the Romans built around Masada can be seen, together with eleven barracks for the Roman soldiers just outside this wall. 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 have enough water for such a long time.

Inside the synagogue, an ostracon bearing the inscription me'aser kohen (tithe for the priest) was found, as were fragments of two scrolls; parts of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel 37 (including the vision of the "dry bones"), found hidden in pits dug under the floor of a small room built inside the synagogue.

In the area in front of the northern palace, eleven small ostraca were recovered, each bearing a single name. One reads "ben Yair" and could be short for Eleazar ben Yair, the commander of the fortress. It has been suggested that the other ten names are those of the men chosen by lot to kill the others and then themselves, as recounted by Josephus.

The remnants of a Byzantine church dating from the 5th and 6th centuries CE, have also been excavated on the top of Masada.

Highway sign near entrance to Masada.

A tram car heading down from Masada

The Masada story has been used in a similar context by the British Mandate of Palestine, which planned the Masada plan to man defensive positions on Mount Carmel with Palmach fighters, in order to stop Erwin Rommel's expected drive through the region in 1942. The plan was abandoned following Rommel's defeat at El Alamein.

Inspired by the last stand of the Jews against the Romans at Masada, the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Moshe Dayan initiated the regular practice of the troops finishing their Tironut (IDF basic training) pilgrimage to and swearing-in ceremonies on Masada, where they swear the oath that "Masada shall never fall again." Hundreds of Israeli soldiers climbed at night in rows through the Snake Road and then were sworn in with torches lighting the background. This was customary for troops of the Israeli Armor Corps, the Givati Brigade and others.^[4] Marches to Masada are still popular in the IDF and a requirement for many units such as Nahal.

Masada has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. An audio-visual light show is presented nightly on the western side of the mountain (access by car from the Arad road or by foot, down the mountain via the Roman ramp path).

In 2007, a new museum opened at the site in which archeological findings are displayed within a theatrical setting. ^[5]

[edit] Citations

^ Nachman Ben-Yehuda, The Masada Myth: Scholar presents evidence that the heroes of the Jewish Great Revolt were not heroes at all., The Bible and Interpretation
^ Kloppenborg, John. Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World. Routledge, 1996, p. 101.
^ A natural spur at Masada by Dan Gill. Nature 364, pp.569-570 (12 August 1993); DOI 10.1038/364569a0
^ Dan Bitan, Mesada the Symbol and the Legend, the Dead Sea and the Judean Desert, 1960, Yad Ben Zvi
^ A new museum at Masada. Ynetnews (2007-05-06). Retrieved on 2007-05-06.

[edit] References

M. Avi-Yonah et al., Israel Exploration Journal 7, 1957, 1–160 (excavation report Masada)
Y. Yadin, Masada, London 1966
Y. Yadin, Israel Exploration Journal 15, 1965 (excavation report Masada)
N. Ben-Yehuda, Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking In Israel, University of Wisconsin Press (December 8, 1995)
N. Ben-Yehuda, Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada, Humanity Books (June 2002)

[edit] See also

Masada (miniseries) — a 1981 TV miniseries based on the Masada siege events
Gamla - a battle with similarities during the Great Jewish Revolt
Numantia, where the Arevaci preferred suicide over surrendering to the Romans, has a similar meaning in Spanish culture.