By Berl Ratzer*
Masada is one of the many UNESCO World Heritage sites in Israel and the most visited National Park and historical site.
Many millennia of erosion have separated it from the rest of the ridge overlooking the Dead Sea leaving it to stand alone, majestic and imposing. Masada is not a tel (In archaeology – a ‘hill’ or ‘mound’) and has but two main archaeological levels – the Herodian, when it was built in the first century BCE, and its destruction less than one hundred years later.
The story of Masada comes to us from one source, one source alone – the Roman historian Josephus Flavius. In his book “The Wars of the Jews” Josephus described the Jewish revolt against Rome which began in 67 CE and ended, either with the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE or the fall of Masada in 73CE.
The exact locality of Masada was forgotten until identified by explorers in the early 19th century. A brief survey expedition was conducted in 1955/56 and the full excavation, led by Professor Yigael Yadin, was completed in two seasons – October 1963 to April 1964 and December 1964 to March 1965. 
Such was the excitement generated by the idea of excavating Masada that thousands of volunteers from all over the world participated during the eleven months of work. Accommodation was in tents on the western side of Masada, alongside the camp of the Roman Tenth Legion. Conditions were Spartan.
A surprising amount of rain – flooding the tents and stopping work and rendering all approach roads to the camp impassable – showed that Josephus’s much doubted description of once flooded dry river beds was in fact accurate:
“and he hewed cisterns out of the rock and in that manner he was able to provide water as though there were springs at their disposal”.
And in the center of Masada, a small patch of flowers struggles to show itself after such a shower.
The water streaming down the wadis was more than sufficient to fill the two rows of cisterns, dug into the south-western side of the mountain and connected by an aqueduct.
Masada is surrounded on all sides by a very steep and deep drop which offers protection from attack. The main access to Masada is via the snake path, which is steep and arduous. The cable car makes Masada wheel chair accessible. At the entrance, with its bench around the walls, we can clearly see the extent to which the original has been preserved.
Throughout Masada everything below the black line is original; everything above the black line has been reconstructed with blocks found in the immediate proximity.
The first impression the visitor has is how drab everything seems to be – stones, stones and more stones. However, originally the walls were thickly plastered both inside and outside – both to seal the walls, and to keep the uneven building stones in place and to decorate and beautify them with colorful frescoes.
Although a fortress, Masada served as a winter retreat for Herod, the ideal place to escape the cold and rain of Jerusalem. Herod had two palaces on Masada, the western and the northern.
The western palace served as the ceremonial palace where important guests were entertained. The mosaic floors, although typical of those found throughout the Roman Empire had no human or animal representations and no depictions of Roman deities.
The Northern palace was designed solely for Herod’s pleasure, and is a feat of engineering innovations. Its three terraces are on the northern extremity of the mountain, clearly visible from afar. The lower and middle terraces appear to rest on artificial platforms and both were purely for relaxation and leisure. The walls were plastered and painted and both were surrounded by columns.
Fortress With A View 
The bath house is typical of bath houses throughout the Roman Empire. At the entrance is a large courtyard with some of the mosaic floor still visible as is part of a column clearly showing that it was made up of separate drums joined one to the next.
From the courtyard one proceeds to the 
– the change room, where the bench and the small cupboards are clearly visible as are a few floor tiles and the wall frescoes. Stuck in one corner, clearly not part of the original structure, is the simple bath used less than a hundred years later by the zealots.
The next room was the frigidarium – the cold room and then into warm water in the tepidarium before enjoying the heat and steam of the caldarium.
The complex of storerooms and the many storage jugs found in them are evidence that Masada would always be well supplied even for an unscheduled royal visit. Only a small number of storerooms were excavated and from the collapsed walls may be possible to assume that the final destruction was caused by earthquake.
With the outbreak of the revolt against the Romans in 67 CE, Jewish rebels, generally known as Sicarii or zealots, overthrew the Roman garrison stationed on Masada to safeguard the salt caravans along the Dead Sea. Preparing for a long siege, they may have used these storerooms to stock up on the basic foods they would need, all of which were virtually non-perishable. In fact, Josephus tells us that victorious Romans found “Wine and oil in abundance with all kinds of pulse and dates”.
The siege wall, remains of which can be clearly seen surrounding Masada, preventing anyone from leaving Masada and certainly preventing fresh supplies reaching the defenders, did not bring about the expected surrender of the zealots.
The Roman legion camps alongside the siege wall are almost identical in layout to those throughout the Roman Empire. The largest camp – the headquarters of General Lucius Flavius Silva (governor of the province of Judaea) – was opposite the Northern palace and close to the ramp.
Never A Slave To Be
According to Josephus, there were 960 zealots living on Masada – men, women and children. They had subdivided rooms in the western palace and other buildings; they had added a crude bath in the corner of the change rooms in the bath house and they had made alterations to the synagogue built by Herod.
This was the earliest synagogue discovered by archaeologists until that time in the Holy Land, and proved conclusively that those who believed that the first synagogues (Greek for the Hebrew ‘Beit Knesset’, house of gathering) were built only after the destruction of the Temple were wrong. (They also ignored the fact that the New Testament tells us that Jesus preached in the synagogue in Capernaum).
It was on the floor of the synagogue that perhaps the most remarkable discovery was made. In a pit, which may have served as a geniza (a storage place for bits of holy parchment which were no longer usable), were the remains of a scroll, small and worn at the edges but easily legible.
“The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones. … and lo they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man can these bones live? … … Prophesy upon those bones and say unto them O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
“… There was a noise and … the bones came together, bone to his bone. … Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. … Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations … and will bring them into their own land; And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel. …
“… And the nations shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore”.
No less startling a discovery was the mikveh – the ritual purification pool. A delegation of Orthodox rabbis climbed the arduous snake path ignoring the heat despite their heavy clothes, large hats, heavy beards and side curls swinging in the wind, to check that it indeed fulfilled all religious requirements.
According to Josephus, the Romans, using Jewish slaves, built the ramp to reach the wall as well as a battering ram:
“The battering ram swung continuously against the wall till at long last a breach was made and a small section collapsed.”
The upper part of the ramp has eroded over the last 2,000 years and the breach in the wall can be clearly seen. It was clear to the zealots that the Romans would overrun Masada on the morrow. Elazar, the leader of the zealots gathered “the toughest of his comrades” and laid out his plan.
Rather than being taken as slaves he proposed an extreme alternative. So extreme that it took much persuasion before it was accepted:
“… In the end, not a man failed to carry out his terrible resolve. One and all they disposed of their entire families. … Then they made one heap of all that they possessed and set it on fire. … Ten were chosen by lots to be the executioners of the rest. Every man lay down beside his wife and children and exposed his throat. Then the one that drew the lot killed the nine and last of all himself.
“… These men died supposing that they had left no living soul to fall into the hands of the Romans. .. But two old women escaped and with five little children hid in the cisterns. … At dawn the Romans made their assault. … Seeing no enemy, only a dreadful solitude they were at a loss to guess what had happened. They shouted … and the women came out and gave the Romans a detailed account of what had happened.”
The chose death by their own hand rather that submit to Roman slavery.
Do the revelations of the archaeological excavation support Josephus’ version of the events?
As we have seen, the ramp is where is should be; the break in the casement wall cannot be denied. Undoubtedly the 960 bodies would have been disposed of by the Romans or ravaged by wild animals leaving no remains.
However, on the lower level of the Northern palace, next to the cold-water pool of the bath house, three bodies were discovered, a man, a woman and a child. The remains of 25 skeletons, fifteen males, six females, four children and one embryo, were discovered in a cave on the southern end of Masada. All the remains are buried in the mound at the foot of the ramp.
In addition to cooking pots, storage vessels, arrow heads, round stone missiles, bits of cloth and woven baskets, a pair of lady’s sandals, jewelry, cosmetic items and coins, many ostraca, pottery sherds with a name inscribed on them, were found near the storerooms.
They may have served as ration cards for the rarer items of food. But in the debris on the floor not far from the store rooms eleven unusual ostraca were found, each inscribed with a single name apparently written by the same person. One of the names was Ben Yair.
Could this have been Yair Ben Elazar the leader of Masada?
Could these have been the ostraca used to draw the lots? We may never know but they do fit the category of circumstantial evidence.
*Born and educated in South Africa, Beryl Ratzer is an Israeli Tour Guide, who combines her knowledge of Israeli archaeology, geography and history with her great love of the Land of Israel to enrich the tourist and the historian alike in their Holy Land adventure.
She is the author of ‘A Historical Tour Of The Holly Land’
A concise history of the Holy Land with photographs and illustrations, history comes alive as you read – Hebrew scriptures, and learn about the Canaanites, Israelites, First and Second Temples, Greeks, Romans, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Crusaders, Mamelukes culminating in the State of Israel.
www.ratzer-holyland.com
