Day 6 Israel Part 1: Massada

A part of the Dead Sea that has dried up

Today we left our hotel at Ein Bokek along the Dead Sea and drove north. Now the Dead Sea (also known as the Sea of Salt) has two parts that are separated from one another. The evaporation continuously taking place has separated the deeper northern part from the southern part. The southern Dead Sea is only 2 to 3 meters deep whereas the northern is up to 300 meters deep. There is canal that has been built that allows water to flow down to the southern area to keep it from drying up completely.

 

We traveled north along the shore and we came to Massada which in Hebrew means “fortress” and is the #1 tourist destination in Israel. It is an isolated rock plateau that rises 450 meters above the Dead Sea with an area of approximately 600 x 230 meters.  It has very steep inclines which gave it a natural protection from attackers.

You can walk up but the cable car is the way to go! (note the path just below the cable car)

View looking down from the cable car as we arrive at the top....it's a long way up when you cannot see where you started!

these are the store rooms

Herod the Great built the fortress between 37 and 31 BC.  It included palaces, storehouses, barracks and armory and very importantly cleverly designed cisterns. Channels all along the top of the plateau would be carved to drain any rain water into large cisterns.  When the Zealots came to occupy the fortress some 70 years later after Herod's death the cisterns and storehouses still provided resources.

a room in which pigeons and doves were raised

me looking out over Massada

security guards with another group - notice what they are carrying

At the time of the revolt in 66 AD, a group of Jewish Zealots  made Massada their base and used it to raid and harass the Romans. According to the historian Josephus Flavius, in 73 AD the Romans built camps at the base and laid siege.  

In order to attack the Jewish rebels they build a rampart using thousands of tons of stone on the western approach to Masada.  They used worker slaves that that in turn would be killed by the rebels.  The Romans then brought in Jewish slaves to do the work. In the spring of 74 AD they raised a battering ram up the rampart and breached the fortress walls.

Josephus Flavius retells the story as told to him by 2 surviving women. The rebel leader chose suicide rather than surrendering.  There were almost 1000  men women and children.  Each man would kill his own family and there were 10 men chosen by lot to kill the remainder. Then they would choose one to kill the 9 and the last would kill himself.

In the words of one writer, “Masada symbolizes the determination of the Jewish people to be free in its own land”.

This was an amazing site to see and pictures do not do justice to the immense height and size of this place! 

(Note: the height of Masada compares to the observation decks of the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario!  If it was compared to an office tower; at 10' per storey - it would be 130 storeys high!)

Blessings!