photos: 1. Herod’s bathhouse/area where the “lots” were found - 2. bathhouse interior caldarium (hot room--the floor stood on the brick and stone columns; hot air flowed under the floor and rose through clay pipes, still to be seen on the back wall!) - 3. storerooms complex (29 long rooms built by Herod to hold food, liquids, and weapons) - 4. wall of a storeroom (the rocks below the black line were still standing; above the line were reconstructed by the archeologists) - 5. the siege ramp (view from the top of Masada)

MASADA: The huge, rocky mountaintop fortress of Masada is located in the Judean desert next to the western shore of the Dead Sea, south of Qumran and En Gedi. According to the historian, Josephus, the first fortress was built by Jonathan the High Priest sometime between 103 and 76 B.C. Herod, who ruled from 37 B.C. to 4 A.D. was well aware of the strategic advantages of Masada, and he therefore chose the site as a refuge against his enemies and as a winter palace. During his reign, luxurious palaces were built here in addition to well-stocked storerooms, water cisterns, defence towers, barracks, and a casement wall. After Herod’s death, the Romans stationed a garrison at Masada.

Josephus relates that one of the first events of the Great Revolt of the Jews against the Romans, which broke out in 66 A.D., was the conquest of Masada. Eleazar ben Yair became commander of the rebel community on the mountain. It was a varied group, which apparently included Essenes and Samaritans. The last of the rebels fled to Masada after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. and joined those already at the fortress. The rebels lived in rooms in the casement wall around the top of the mountain and in some of Herod’s palaces. They also constructed a synagogue and mikvehs (Jewish ritual baths). They left behind numerous material vestiges that attest to their community life.

According to Josephus, Masada was the last rebel stronghold in Judea. For two years, these Jewish rebels harried the Romans until Flavius Silva, the Roman Governor, resolved to crush this outpost of resistance in 72 A.D. He marched on Masada with his 10th Legion, consisting of 8000 troops, auxiliary forces, and thousands of prisoners of war carrying water, timber, and provisions. They built eight camps around the base of the mountain, built a circumvallation (siege wall) all the way around it (allegedly to keep the Jews from getting away!), and constructed a ramp of earth, wooden supports, and large stones on a natural slope near the western approach to Masada. The siege lasted for months. During this time, the Romans built a tower with a battering ram. In 73 A.D. they moved the tower up the ramp and began to batter the wall. They finally succeeded in making a breach and setting ablaze an inner support wall the rebels had constructed.

That night, the first of Passover, Eleazar ben Yair reviewed the fateful position. The Romans would overrun them in the morning. There was no hope of relief, and none of escape. Only two alternatives were open: surrender or death. He resolved “that a death of glory was preferable to a life of infamy, and that the most magnanimous resolution would be to disdain the idea of surviving the loss of their liberty.” Rather than become slaves to their conquerors, the defenders--960 men, women, and children--ended their lives at their own hands. When the Romans reached the summit the next morning, they were met with silence.

In Josephus’ own words: “Then, having chosen by lot ten of their number to dispatch the rest, they laid themselves down each beside his prostrate wife and children and, flinging their arms around them, offered their throats in readiness for the executants of the melancholy office. These, having unswervingly slaughtered all, ordained the same rule of the lot for one another, that he on whom it fell should slay first the nine and then himself last of all;...They died in the belief that they had left not a soul of them alive to fall into Roman hands; The Romans advanced to the assault...seeing none of the enemy but on all sides an awful solitude, and flames within and silence, they were at a loss to conjecture what had happened. And so met (the Romans) with the multitude of the slain, but could take no pleasure in the fact, though it were done to their enemies. Nor could they do other than wonder at the courage of their resolution, and at the immovable contempt of death which so great a number of them had shown, when they went through with such an action as this.”

Two women and five children who had been hiding in the cisterns on the mountaintop told the Romans what had happened that night. The fall of Masada was the final act in the Roman conquest of Judea.