Masada

This article is about the Judean fortress. For other usages, see Masada (disambiguation).

Siege of Masada
Part of First Jewish-Roman War
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
Jewish Sicarii	Roman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Elazar ben Ya'ir	Lucius Flavius Silva
Strength
960	15,000
Casualties and losses
953	Unknown, if any

Masada

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Criteria	Cultural: iii, iv, vi
Reference	1040
Inscription	2001 (25th Session)

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 on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada became famous for its attributed mythic significance in 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.

Geography

The cliffs on the east edge of Masada are about 1,300 feet high, dropping off to the Dead Sea, 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.

History

According to Flavius 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 is 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. The Zealots (according to Josephus) in contrast to the Sicarii, carried the main burden of the rebellion, which objected to 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.

According to Nachman Ben-Yehuda, before and after the establishment of the modern state of Israel, scholars embellished the rendition of Josephus and created a modern legend of Masada, of the Jews heroic last stand against the Roman Empire.

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, 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. 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 drawn lots and slain 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.

Masada today

View from the top of Masada

Platform access to the fortress

The site of Masada was identified in 1842 and extensively excavated in from 1963 to 1965 by an expedition led by Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin. A pair of cable cars now carries those visitors who do not wish to climb the ancient Snake Path, now restored on the eastern side of the mountain (access via the Dead Sea road). The area remained largely untouched by humans or nature in the past two millennia, due to the location's remoteness from human habitation and its arid environment. The Roman ramp still stands on the western side and can be climbed on foot. Many of the ancient buildings were restored from their remnants, as were 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 were also found 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 water system, which explains how the rebels managed to have enough water for such a long time.

There are also the remnants of a Byzantine church settled in the 5th and 6th centuries CE, 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 legend (or myth) of the last stand of the Jews of antiquity against the enemies beseiging them 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 swore in with torches lighting the background. This was customary for troops of the Israeli Armor Corps, the Givati Brigade and others. 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).

Trivia

Numerous Car Services in Brooklyn, NY and other Jewish Communities around the United States use the name Masada in honor of this battle.

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)

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.

External links

• Masada by Google Maps
• Online works of Josephus
• MASADA - FACT AND FICTION. A 23 minutes 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