Just a brief history, this fortress was built by Herod the Great, not because he was lacking in palaces, but this was a safe place for him to go outside of Jerusalem. (It is 440 m above the level of the nearby Dead Sea). It was equipped with palaces, cisterns for water, and many food storage reserves. Seeing as it's so blasted hot and right in the middle of a dessert, its not difficult to believe that it was rarely used. After Herod's death, the fortress was the last stronghold for Jews resisting the Roman invasion.
Driving up, you can see a 'staircase' in the rocks leading to the top of the fortress. Those were three tiers of Herod's palace. One of those tiers is shown below; its a circular hall that was used for entertaining.
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| view of the circular hall of Herod's palace from the top of Masada looking down |
I'm glad there was a cable car to take us to the top!
From the top there are great views of the... desert. The Dead Sea is just in the distance, and you can see in the picture below that the Dead Sea actually has a land bridge separating it into two different bodies. The Northern body (on the left) is about 4 times longer at 40 miles.
More pictures:
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| slope on the East side of Masada facing the Dead Sea |
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| a diagram of the fortress |
When the Romans finally arrived to Masada around 70 AD they build eight camps around the base of the fortress. You can see the remains of those camps still today. The West side of the fortress is not as steep, and the Romans built (using Jewish slaves, ironically) a ramp leading up to the top. After completing the ramp, for some reason the Romans decided to wait until morning before invading. The Jews taking refuge inside (about 1000 people) decided together that they'd rather die with their freedom than live as slaves, so they agreed to commit mass suicide. Each man killed those in his family, and then the men drew lots to decide who would kill the rest before killing himself.
"Masada shall not fall again"
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