Masada

Siege of Masada
Part of First Jewish-Roman War
Masada National Park
Date Late 72 – early 73 Location Masada in modern-day eastern Israel Result Roman victory
Belligerents
Jewish Sicarii	Roman Empire
Commanders
Eleazar ben Yair	Lucius Flavius Silva
Strength
960, including non-combattants	Legion Tenth Fretensis 4,800 Auxiliaries and slaves 4,000 - 10,000
Casualties and losses
953 dead, 7 captured	Unknown

Masada*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	Israel
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 (Hebrew מצדה, pronounced 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. After the First Jewish-Roman War (also known as the Great Jewish Revolt) a siege of the fortress by troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of Jewish rebels, who preferred death to surrender.

Geography

The cliffs on the east edge of Masada are about 1,300 feet (400 m) high and the cliffs on the west are about 300 feet (90 m) high; the natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult. The top of the plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about 1,800 feet (550 m) by 900 feet (275 m). There was a casemate wall around the top of the plateau totaling 4,300 feet (1.3 km) long and 12 feet (3.7 m) 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 up to fortified gates.

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 Jewish extremists called the Sicarii overcame the Roman garrison of Masada. After the destruction of the Temple, the jewish rebels and their families fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountain top, using it as a base for raiding Roman settlements.^[1]

The works of Josephus are the sole record of events that took place during the siege. According to modern interpretations of Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist splinter group of the Zealots who were equally antagonistic to both Romans and other Jewish groups.^[2] 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 Latinized 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 CE they were joined by additional Sicarii and their families that were expelled from Jerusalem by the Jewish population with whom the Sicarii were in conflict shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.

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.^[3] Remains of two mikvahs were found elsewhere on Masada.

Remnants of one of several legionary camps at Masada, just outside the circumvallation wall

In 72, 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 attempts by the Sicarii to counterattack the besiegers during this process, a significant difference from his accounts of other sieges against Jewish fortresses. He did record a raid on a nearby Jewish settlement called Ein-Gedi during the siege, where the Sicarii killed 700 of its inhabitants.

Some historians also believe that Romans may have used Jewish slaves to build the rampart. According to Dan Gill,^[4] geological observations in the early 1990s revealed that the 375-foot (114 m) high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock that required a ramp only 30 feet (9.1 m) high built atop it in order to reach the Masada defenses. This discovery would diminish both the scope of the construction and of the conflict between the Sicarii and Romans, relative to the previous perspective in which the ramp was an epic feat of construction.

The ramp seen from above

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. 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, defeat, slavery or execution by their enemies.

The 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 exhortations to his followers, prior to the mass suicide, verbatim to the Romans. Because Judaism strongly discourages suicide, 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. Josephus says that Eleazar ordered his men to destroy everything except the foodstuffs to show that the defenders retained the ability to live, and so chose the time of their death over slavery but archaeological excavations have shown that storerooms which contained their provisions were burnt. Josephus also reported that the Romans found arms sufficient for ten thousand men as well as iron, brass and lead which casts further doubt on the account. Historians also point out the parallels between the incidents at Jotapata and Masada such as Eleazar's second speech corresponding to the speech which Josephus himself delivered at Jotapata under similar circumstances and the transference of the lottery motif from the former to the latter.^[5]

Masada today

Thermal baths on Masada

The site of Masada was identified in 1842 and extensively excavated between 1963 and 1965 by an expedition led by Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin. While a hike up the Snake Path on the eastern side of the mountain (access via the Dead Sea road) is considered part of the "Masada experience," a cable car operates at the site for those who wish to avoid the physical exertion. 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 cohen (tithe for the priest) was found, as were fragments of two scrolls; parts of Deuteronomy 33-34 and parts of Ezekiel 35-38 (including the vision of the "dry bones"), found hidden in pits dug under the floor of a small room built inside the synagogue. In other loci fragments were found of the books of Genesis, Leviticus, Psalms, and Sirach, as well as of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

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.

Archaeologist Yigael Yadin's excavations uncovered the skeletal remains of 28 people at Masada. The remains of a male 20-22 years of age, a female 17-18 and a child approximately 12 years old, were found in the palace. The remains of 25 people were found in a cave at the base of the cliff. Carbon dating of textiles found with the remains in the cave indicate they are contemporaneous with the period of the Revolt. All the remains were reburied at Masada with full military honours on July 7, 1969.

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

Cable car heading down from Masada

The Masada story was the inspiration for the "Masada plan" devised by the British during the Mandate era. The plan was 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.

The Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), Moshe Dayan, initiated the practice of holding the swearing-in ceremony of soldiers who have completed their Tironut (IDF basic training) on top of Masada. The ceremony ends with the declaration: "Masada shall not fall again." The soldiers climb the Snake Path at night and are sworn in with torches lighting the background. ^[6]

Masada was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 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 in a theatrical setting. ^[7]

A 2,000-year-old seed discovered during archaeological excavations in the early 1960s has been successfully germinated to become a date plant, the oldest known such germination. ^[8]

References

Bibliography

• 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)

See also

• Jewish-Roman Wars
• Knanaya
• Siege of Jerusalem
• Gamla
• Zealotry
• Masada (miniseries) — a 1981 TV miniseries based on the Masada siege events
• Numantia, where the Arevaci preferred suicide over surrendering to the Romans, has a similar meaning in Spanish culture.
• Masada2000

Media

External links

• "Yadin photographs & footage of the excavations"
• Masada by Google Maps
• Online works of Josephus
• MASADA - FACT AND FICTION. A 23 minute video documentary, produced by the multimedia unit of Hebrew University. It is freely available online
• Nachman Ben-Yehooda on the construction of The Myth of Masada
• Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and The Myth of Masada
• Masada in the Jewish Encyclopedia
• The credibility of Josephus
• LIVIUS article on Jewish Wars
• World Heritage Sites page
• Israel National Parks Authority page
• Masada entry in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith
• Masada photos
• Panoramic photos of Metzadah
• Extensive photo gallery of Masada ruins

World Heritage Sites in Israel Old City of Acre · Bahá’i Holy Places in Haifa and Western Galilee · Incense Route – Desert Cities in the Negev (Avdat, Haluza, Mamshit and Shivta) · Masada · Old City and Walls of Jerusalem† · Tel Be'er Sheva · Tel Hazor · Tel Megiddo · White City of Tel Aviv † Territorial status yet to be determined