Masada is the location of the Dead Sea fortress built by Herod the Great around the time of Jesus, the first century, when he ruled up until 4 AD. What slays me is that this entire place was built for Herod to have a place to hide if the Romans or any other enemy got too frisky, and he was actually only there on site for a total of about 20 days. What the heck? I cannot imagine how many slaves died building the water system on the side of this mountain, for example, and just how huge the complex is and how much work it would have taken to build it in 14 years, but just wow. The scope of the project, the attention to detail, the ingenious design, and the main dude was only there for 20 days. It had a heated pool and sauna (that we didn’t get to see this trip) and tons of rooms and a three terraced mansion on the end. The “Snake Trail” to get up there was 2.5 miles straight up. Not this girl. Anyway, on with the pictures.
We rode a cable car to the top instead of taking the snake trail, thank you God, and it took a whopping 3 minutes. I have a video out of the front video on the ride down. It’s pretty incredible. They packed us in like sardines and pulled us straight up to the top. From there, we could look down and see the remnants of the Roman camps that were built to surround the fortress for 3 years as the Romans planned to take it down.
Oh ya, did I mention the gruesome end of Herod’s people in Masada? The Romans encamped around the mountain and walled it off for three years. In the meantime, built a ramp on the back side of the mountain to breach the fortress.
Here’s the breach point with the ramp they came up. When the Romans finally did reach the top of the fortress to take it by force, they found no one left alive inside. The people there knew their fate. They knew that the Romans would get in, and when they did, the men would be marched back to Jerusalem and crucified, and the women and children would become Roman slaves. So, they all off-ed themselves. Wow. That’s a heck of a story!
Here are the original steps up into the palace area, I always like to see the original stuff, not the fixed up with modern stuff versions. This black line represents where the restorers added on top of what was still standing, to delineate exactly how they found it.
There was a really cool water system that involved small canals carved into the side of the mountain to drain into cisterns. Here’s one such canal.
The other thing I thought that was really neat was the place of worship that had original tile in the floors and in the walls. Here are a few pics of that.
OK, that about does it for Masada. A great builder, Herod…other than that, a great mad man who killed a LOT of people, including his wife.
Next up, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.