When was masada destroyed

Masada is located atop an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. On the east side, the rock falls in a sheer drop of about meters to the Dead Sea and on the western edge it stands about meters above the surrounding terrain.

The natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult. Calling himself Josephus Flavius, he became a Roman citizen and a successful historian. After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple 70 CE they were joined by zealots and their families who had fled from Jerusalem.

There, they held out for three years, raiding and harassing the Romans. The Romans established camps at the base of Masada, laid siege to it and built a circumvallation wall. They then constructed a rampart of thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth against the western approaches of the fortress and, in the spring of 74 CE, moved a battering ram up the ramp and breached the wall of the fortress.

Flavius dramatically recounts the story told him by two surviving women. The defenders — almost one thousand men, women and children — led by ben Yair, burnt down the fortress and killed each other. The Zealots cast lots to choose 10 men to kill the remainder. They then chose among themselves the one man who would kill the survivors.

That last Jew then killed himself. We were the very first that revolted, and we are the last to fight against them; and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God has granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom. The story of Masada survived in the writings of Josephus but not many Jews read his works and for well over fifteen hundred years it was a more or less forgotten episode in Jewish history.

Then, in the 's, Hebrew writer Isaac Lamdan wrote "Masada," a poetic history of the anguished Jewish fight against a world full of enemies. The heroic story of Masada and its dramatic end attracted many explorers to the Judean desert in attempts to locate the remains of the fortress.

The site was identified in , but intensive excavations took place only in the mid's with the help of hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers from Israel and from many foreign countries. The rhomboid, flat plateau of Masada measures x m. The casemate wall two parallel walls with partitions dividing the space between them into rooms , is m. It was built along the edge of the plateau, above the steep cliffs, and it had many towers. Three narrow, winding paths led from below to fortified gates. The water supply was guaranteed by a network of large, rock-hewn cisterns on the northwestern side of the hill.

They filled during the winter with rainwater flowing in streams from the mountain on this side. Cisterns on the summit supplied the immediate needs of the residents of Masada and could be relied upon in time of siege. To maintain interior coolness in the hot and dry climate of Masada, the many buildings of various sizes and functions had thick walls constructed of layers of hard dolomite stone, covered with plaster. Masada actually boasted two palaces. One was at the northern end of the rock plateau.

It had three levels embedded in the side of the cliff and was placed to grab summer breezes in the intense heat of the Judaean desert.

Some of the walls were covered in plaster painted with images in deep blues, brilliant reds, yellow and black, of which only fragments now remain. A few of the floors were inlaid with mosaics featuring elaborate designs like those found more commonly in Greece or Rome. Presumably artisans hired by Herod the Great created these, perhaps to emulate what he had seen in Rome. Yadin reconstructed some of the original buildings from fallen stones.

The best example of this at Masada was the large complex of storerooms that were in the northeastern part of the site. Here, just the lower portions of the walls were left, but the stones from higher up in the walls were all lying right where they had fallen.

Yadin and his team used every available stone to rebuild the walls, which turned out to be 11 feet high. Nearly 50, cubic yards of dirt was sifted — the first time that every single bucket of dirt had been sifted at an excavation in Israel. The coins allowed Yadin to date very precisely the remains that they were uncovering — particularly the coins that had been made just a few years earlier, during the First Jewish Revolt. T he first Jewish rebellion began in 66 CE, when the Jews in what is now Israel rose up against the Romans who were occupying their land.

The revolt lasted until 70 CE, at which point the Romans captured Jerusalem and burnt most of it to the ground, including the Temple that had been built there by Herod the Great to replace the original one constructed by King Solomon, which had been destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians centuries earlier.

When the rebellion ended, a group of rebels managed to escape the destruction of Jerusalem and settled at Masada. They took over the fortified buildings and palaces that Herod had originally built on top of Masada as a place of last refuge.

Josephus must be referring to the sort of mosaics that Yadin found still partially intact on some of the floors.

As to the cisterns that he mentions, some of them dug into the rock on top of Masada were simply enormous. Yadin estimated that they each had a capacity of up to , cubic feet of water; added together, they could hold almost 1. Once the ramp was constructed, siege engines, like a battering ram and catapults that flung large stones and ballistae that shot huge arrows, could be wheeled upon its length and used against the walls of Masada.

Josephus noted:. Today, full-size replicas of some of these siege engines can be seen at the site, left there after ABC filmed a miniseries about Masada that aired in Yadin and the other archaeologists uncovered other objects during their excavations in the s that can also still be seen at the site, including what look like catapult balls that were flung up by the Romans, and possibly slingstones that were thrown back down by the Jewish defenders.

After the Roman siege engines were set up, the real siege began. Several men grabbed the rope that was tied to the great piece of pointed wood that formed the battering ram and pulled it back, back, back.

When they let go, the ram smashed against the fortification wall with a huge crash. The Jewish defenders, however, had created their own wall just inside, which was made of wood and earth, so that it would be soft and yielding, as Josephus wrote. He said that they laid down great beams of wood lengthwise right next to the inside of the wall, then did the same about 10 feet or so away, so that they had two large stacks of wooden beams. In between the two stacks, they poured earth, so that in the end, they had an extremely thick wall with wood on both sides and an earthen core.

The buildings on Masada were built with stones hewn from dolomite rock; they were hard and heavy, a fact that would have made their transfer to the probable point of breaching very difficult and would have made lifting the stones especially taxing.

Moreover, if the Romans were able to remove even a few stones from the base, an entire section of the weakened wall could be knocked down. Wood-reinforced earthen walls were common in Roman military construction. The likely answer was quite simple: Wooden beams were used in the roofs of all the rooms, halls and storerooms of Masada with perhaps one or two exceptions. Most of these structures were built during the time of Herod.

The desperate defenders could remove wooden beams from the buildings as well as from the casemate wall and towers that surrounded them. The great amounts of soil required to fill the wall, as Josephus reported, could be carried to the site from elsewhere on the mountaintop, even by women, children and the elderly. From the evidence of unburnt beams in two towers and the remains of burnt beams elsewhere, we know that the wooden ceiling beams most prevalent on Masada were about 13 to 16 feet long and 8 to 10 inches in diameter.

There were also longer beams. Our calculations show that the Zealots must have dismantled more than 90 percent of the ceilings that were on the mountain. We estimate that they used about 4, foot-long beams, several dozen longer beams and hundreds of short beams about 7 to 8 feet long. Working in haste and with many improvisations, here is how the Zealots may have constructed the wooden and earthen wall.

The restoration we propose is but one of many possible forms of the wall. The new wall would reinforce the section of stone casemate wall that faced the top of the ramp constructed by the Romans outside the wall. It is difficult to determine the exact location of the new wall and how tower , located in that sector, was incorporated into it; however, we assume the tower was incorporated into the wall.

It is also unclear how the newer wall related structurally to the existing casemate wall. It seems most likely to us that the inner wall of the casemate, as well as the roof that spanned the inner and outer walls, was dismantled. Against the original outer stone wall, on the inside of the fortress, a wood-and-earth wall was constructed, probably consisting of three parts: two stacks of wooden beams—each stack held together with ropes and nails—separated by an earth fill.

The outermost stack, next to the remaining casemate wall, contained the to foot-long wooden beams scavenged from ceilings on the mountaintop. These beams were laid perpendicular to the outer stone wall with their ends butting against it. Mortar filled the spaces between the beams.

This stack of beams probably extended about 6 to 10 feet higher than the original stone wall. Approximately 12 feet from the outer wood-beam wall, an inner wood-beam wall was built. Between the two stacks of beams, earth was packed. The earth layer may have contained medium- and small-sized stones to help stabilize it. Josephus, in describing the earth-and-wood wall, mentions perpendicular beams called warp beams, as opposed to weft beams, in some translations.

We assume that he was speaking about long vertical beams in the earth layer that helped stabilize the soil, especially at the edges of the wall, so that it would not spill to the sides. It is also possible that an additional column of vertical beams separated the outer stack of horizontal beams from the layer of earth. These vertical beams would have helped spread the pressure of the battering rams over a wider area of the wall, hence diminishing the effect of their blows.

According to our calculations of the amount of wood available, it would have been possible to build a wall 70 to 80 feet long, about 60 feet wide and 24 to 27 feet high, that is, a wall 4 to 8 feet higher than the original stone casemate wall. The new wall would have been practically impregnable to the battering machines, whereas the original stone wall could be shaken and damaged by battering its base.

By increasing the height of the wall, the Zealots forced the Romans to raise the height of the siege ramp as well. Facing a stone wall, the Romans needed only to build their ramp to reach its base; but facing the new wall of wood and earth, which could not be easily undermined, the Romans had to build their ramp much higher; the new wall was vulnerable only from a higher position.

This required the Romans to widen the base of the ramp by pouring additional earth and stones, a time-consuming task that postponed the attempt to breach the wall by weeks. Certainly this delay was needed by the besieged Zealots. Impregnable as the new wood-and-earth wall was to battering, it was not invulnerable to fire. The Jewish defenders must have considered the possibility that the Romans would try to use fire to destroy the new wall they had built.

Perhaps they even planned to prevent this, by covering the wooden beams with damp leather or by placing layers of mortar between the wooden beams at intervals to prevent the fire from spreading. It seems that they believed—that by one means or the other—they could prevent the wall from burning.

When we look at the evidence on the ground, do we find confirmation for our theory? The signs are everywhere. Rooms, halls, corridors and storerooms with clear indications of fire are frequently seen side by side with those in which no signs of fire are to be found. We are certain that if all the wooden ceilings at Masada had been intact, fire would have spread easily and rapidly from room to room, destroying entire blocks—not single rooms or groups of rooms at random, as actually did happen.

The selective dismantling of wooden ceiling beams seems to have begun in two large groups of buildings on Masada—the western and the northern palace areas. Instead of becoming slaves, they chose to die. As Judaism prohibits the act of suicide, the Zealots killed each other.

The account of what happened at Masada comes from two women and five children who survived the mass killing by hiding inside a cistern. By leaving the food and storehouses, he wanted to show the Romans that they chose death over slavery. After the siege of Masada, the Romans had eliminated the last of the rebels and brought an end to the First Jewish-Roman War.

With the revolt over, the Jewish people stayed resilient, continuing two more revolts before gaining independence. However, the first war had lasting repercussions. The war scattered Jewish people across the Mediterranean with close to , people enslaved or captured.

Josephus also claims that over a million people were killed during the siege of Jerusalem. The massive number of deaths and the destruction of the Temple marked a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. Without the Temple, synagogues became central to Jewish life and rabbis soon replaced high priests as community leaders.

What happened at Masada remains a subject of debate. The only written record of the Masada story comes from the historian Josephus. Josephus writes that the Sicarii killed each other to avoid enslavement. However, some historians and archaeologists dispute his account.

It should be mentioned that Josephus was a former commander of Galilee. After the siege, Josephus remained close friends with Titus and was even granted Roman citizenship by the future Emperor. Josephus never returned to Judea but continued to live in Rome under the patronage of the rulers who executed many of his people. Some archaeologists dispute the evidence , claiming that the archaeological sites do not support the idea that the Masada rebels committed mass suicide or killings before the Romans breached the fortification.

Additionally, Josephus provided inaccurate descriptions of Masada, such as the fact that the fortification had two palaces instead of one.

While some archaeologists and historians debate the history of the siege, the final act of the Zealots has become a symbol of heroic martyrdom. The legacy of Masada is the heroism to stand up against tyranny.

The history of Masada is an important story and visitors have the chance to see the site when visiting the Dead Sea region. In fact, it is now one of the most popular attractions in Israel, with millions of people visiting Masada annually.

Username or Email Address. Remember Me. Lost your password? The Sicarii Revolt After the outbreak of riots and violence, several Jewish factions began to emerge, including a group of Zealots known as the Sicarii.

The Assault Ramp To reach the fortification, the Roman legion needed a ramp. The Legacy of Masada What happened at Masada remains a subject of debate.