Masada
Masada is a mountain-top fortress complex in the Judaean Desert, overlooking the western shore of the Dead Sea in southeastern Israel. The fort, built in the first century BC, was constructed atop a natural plateau rising over above the surrounding terrain, east of modern Arad.
The most significant remains at the site date to the reign of Herod the Great, King of Judaea, who transformed Masada into a fortified desert refuge early in his rule. He enclosed the summit with a casemate wall and towers, and constructed storerooms, an advanced water system, and bathhouses, along with two elaborate palaces: one on the western side and another built across three terraces on the northern cliff. These palaces remain among the finest examples of Herodian architecture.
Masada is most renowned for its role during the First Jewish–Roman War, when it became the final holdout of Jewish rebels following the destruction of Jerusalem. A group known as the Sicarii, a radical faction led by Eleazar ben Ya'ir, defended the site against the Roman Tenth Legion under Lucius Flavius Silva. The Romans laid siege by building a circumvallation wall and a massive ramp. According to Josephus, when the walls were breached in 73/74 AD, the Romans found nearly 1,000 inhabitants had died by mass suicide—a claim that remains debated among historians. In modern times, the story of Masada was interpreted as a symbol of heroism that became influential in early Israeli national identity.
Excavations led by archaeologist Yigael Yadin in the 1960s uncovered remarkably preserved remains, including Herod's palaces, storerooms with food remnants, ritual baths, a synagogue, Jewish scrolls, columbaria, and pottery shards bearing names, one inscribed "ben Ya'ir," possibly linked to the final days of the defenders, and a small Byzantine church. The surrounding Roman siege works and bases remain visible and are among the most intact examples of Roman military engineering. Today, Masada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to those siege works, and one of Israel's most popular tourist attractions, drawing around 750,000 visitors a year.
Geography
The cliff of Masada is, geologically speaking, a horst. As the plateau abruptly ends in cliffs steeply falling about to the east and about to the west, the natural approaches to the fortress are very difficult to navigate. The top of the mesa-like plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about by. Herod built a high casemate wall around the plateau totaling in length, reinforced by many towers. The fortress contained storehouses, barracks, an armory, a palace, and a series of cisterns that were refilled by rainwater – with the runoff collected from a single day's rain allegedly able to sustain over 1,000 people for 2 to 3 years. Three narrow, winding paths led from below up to fortified gates.History
Almost all historical information about Masada comes from the first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus. Masada is also mentioned in the Judean Desert Documents.Hasmonean fortress
Josephus writes that the site was first fortified by Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BC. However, so far no Hasmonean-period building remains could be identified during archaeological excavations.Josephus further writes that Herod the Great captured it in the power struggle that followed the death of his father Antipater in 43 BC. It survived the siege of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II Mattathias, who ruled with Parthian support.
Herodian palace-fortress
According to Josephus, between 37 and 31 BC, Herod the Great built a large fortress on the plateau as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt and erected two palaces with an endless food supply.First Jewish–Roman War
In 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels, the Sicarii, overcame the Roman garrison of Masada with the aid of a ruse. According to Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist Jewish splinter group antagonistic to a larger grouping of Jews referred to as the Zealots, who carried the main burden of the rebellion. Josephus said that the Sicarii raided nearby Jewish villages including Ein Gedi, where they massacred 700 women and children.In 73 AD, the Roman governor of Judaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, headed the Roman legion X Fretensis and laid siege to Masada. Another source gives the year of the siege of Masada as 73 or 74 CE. The Roman legion surrounded Masada, building a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. According to Dan Gill, geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock.
The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. The Romans employed the X Legion and a number of auxiliary units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000, of whom an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 were fighting men, in crushing Jewish resistance at Masada.
A giant siege tower with a battering ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp. According to Josephus, when Roman troops entered the fortress, they discovered that its defenders had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and committed mass suicide or killed each other, 960 men, women, and children in total. Josephus wrote of two stirring speeches that the Sicari leader had made to convince his men to kill themselves. Only two women and five children were found alive.
Josephus presumably based his narration upon the field commentaries of the Roman commanders that were accessible to him.
There are discrepancies between archaeological findings and Josephus' writings. Josephus mentions only one of the two palaces that have been excavated, refers only to one fire, though many buildings show fire damage, and claims that 960 people were killed, though the remains of at most 28 bodies have been found. Some of the other details that Josephus gives were correct – for instance, he describes the baths that were built there, the fact that the floors in some of the buildings 'were paved with stones of several colours', and that many pits were cut into the living rock to serve as cisterns. Yadin found some partially intact mosaic floors which meet that description.
Byzantine monastery of Marda
Masada was last occupied during the Byzantine period, when a small church was established at the site. The church was part of a monastic settlement identified with the monastery of Marda known from hagiographical literature. This identification is generally accepted by researchers. The Aramaic common noun marda, "fortress", corresponds in meaning to the Greek name of another desert monastery of the time, Kastellion, and is used to describe that site in the vita of St Sabbas, but it is used as a proper name only for the monastery at Masada, as can be seen from the vita of St Euthymius.Archaeology
Chalcolithic period
An almost inaccessible cave, dubbed Yoram Cave, located on the sheer southern cliff face 100 m below the plateau, has been found to contain numerous plant remains, of which 6,000-year-old barley seeds were in such good state of preservation that their genome could be sequenced. This is the first time that this succeeded with a Chalcolithic plant genome, which is also the oldest one sequenced so far. The result helped determine that the earliest domestication of barley, dated elsewhere in the Fertile Crescent to 10,000 years ago, happened further north up the Jordan Rift Valley, namely in the Upper Jordan Valley in northern Israel.The Yoram Cave seeds were found to be fairly different from the wild variety, proof for an already advanced process of domestication, but very similar to the types of barley still cultivated in the region—an indication for remarkable constancy. Considering the difficulty in reaching the cave, whose mouth opens some 4 m above the exposed access path, the researchers have speculated that it was a place of short-term refuge for Chalcolithic people fleeing an unknown catastrophe.
Identification and initial digs
The site of Masada was identified in 1838 by Americans Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, and in 1842, American missionary Samuel W. Wolcott and the English painter W. Tipping were the first moderns to climb it. After visiting the site several times in the 1930s and 1940s, Shmarya Guttman conducted an initial probe excavation of the site in 1959.Yigael Yadin expedition
Masada was extensively excavated between 1963 and 1965 by an expedition led by Israeli archaeologist and former military Chief-of-Staff Yigael Yadin.Due to the remoteness from human habitation and its arid environment, the site remained largely untouched by humans or nature for two millennia.
Many of the ancient buildings have been restored from their remains, as have the wall paintings of Herod's two main palaces, and the Roman-style bathhouses that he built. The synagogue, storehouses, and houses of the Jewish rebels have also been identified and restored.
Water cisterns two-thirds of the way up the cliff drain the nearby wadis by an elaborate system of channels, which explains how the rebels managed to conserve enough water for such a long time.
The Roman attack ramp still stands on the western side and can be climbed on foot. The meter-high circumvallation wall that the Romans built around Masada can be seen, together with eight Roman siege camps just outside this wall. The Roman siege installations as a whole, especially the attack ramp, are the best preserved of their kind, and the reason for declaring Masada a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Due to the great interest shown by the public, Yadin published a book in 1966 for the general public, "מצדה".