Masada

Imagine you’re on top of the world.

Now imagine that world is entirely desert.

You’ve just put yourself in Masada.

Add a palace and you’re King Herod, who had a knack for putting palaces just about everywhere. 

On the same day we journeyed to En Gedi, we made it to the rocky fortress of Masada.  It was first made war-worthy by the Hasmonean kings after the revolt of the Maccabees, then polished up by Herod, and finally, in its history-making moment, made a last refuge by Jewish rebels when Jerusalem was completely destroyed.

Google Maps has a surprisingly detailed aerial image; even more fun is downloading Google Earth and visually flying over the site.

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Three years of Roman siege and another 1900 plus of weathering don’t do much for palaces: your general decorating style today is monochromatic.

You can still see some of the regal trappings, though the rebels, and monks during the Byzantine era, didn’t feel the need to maintain the original layout.

The synagogue is still visible.

 

The friendly mammal phenomenon continues even on top of the world.

With a place like Masada, numbers are key.  Specifically, the number eight, which was the number of Roman camps that surrounded the mountain during the X Legion’s unrelenting siege.

Finally, the Roman’s took the fortress by building an earthen ramp that reached clear up to the mountain top.  Above as well you can see the white stripe to the upper left of the map photo.

 

This is where Masada entered the history books.  Throughout their history, Roman legions took many cities and many sites in the unstoppable tide of the Empire.  But here they encountered a different opponent.  When Lucius Flavius Silva breached the wall with his troops, he found the defendants had torched their stores, and dispatched themselves to the last man.  Josephus in recording the account tells of two women who hid with several children and survived the mass suicide: they recounted how the rebels had preferred death to slavery at the hands of the Romans.