There are discrepancies between archaeological findings and Josephus' writings. Josephus presumably based his narration upon the field commentaries of the Roman commanders that were accessible to him. Only two women and five children were found alive. Josephus wrote of two stirring speeches that the Sicari leader had made to convince his men to kill themselves. 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. A giant siege tower with a battering ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp. 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. The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. According to Dan Gill, geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m (375 ft) high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock. The Roman legion surrounded Masada, building a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. Another source gives the year of the siege of Masada as 73 or 74 CE. In 73 CE, the Roman governor of Iudaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, headed the Roman legion X Fretensis and laid siege to Masada. Josephus said that the Sicarii raided nearby Jewish villages including Ein Gedi, where they massacred 700 women and children. 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. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, additional members of the Sicarii fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountaintop after slaughtering the Roman garrison. In 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels, the Sicarii, overcame the Roman garrison of Masada with the aid of a ruse. It survived the siege of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II Mattathias, who ruled with Parthian support. Josephus further writes that Herod the Great captured it in the power struggle that followed the death of his father Antipater in 43 BCE. However, so far no Hasmonean-period building remains could be identified during archaeological excavations. Josephus writes that the site was first fortified by Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BCE. History Īlmost all historical information about Masada comes from the first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus. Three narrow, winding paths led from below up to fortified gates. The fortress contained storehouses, barracks, an armory, a palace, and cisterns that were refilled by rainwater. Herod built a 4 m (13 ft) high casemate wall around the plateau totalling 1,300 m (4,300 ft) in length, reinforced by many towers. The top of the mesa-like plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about 550 m (1,800 ft) by 270 m (890 ft). As the plateau abruptly ends in cliffs steeply falling about 400 m (1,300 ft) to the east and about 90 m (300 ft) to the west, the natural approaches to the fortress are very difficult to navigate. The cliff of Masada is, geologically speaking, a horst. The site attracts around 750,000 visitors a year. ĭuring 2005 to 20 to 2012, it was the second-most popular, behind the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. Masada is one of Israel's most popular tourist attractions. However, the archaeological evidence relevant to a mass suicide event is ambiguous at best and rejected entirely by some scholars. Herod the Great built two palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE.Īccording to Josephus, the siege of Masada by Roman troops from 73 to 74 CE, at the end of the First Jewish–Roman War, ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Sicarii rebels who were hiding there. It is located on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea 20 km (12 mi) east of Arad. Masada ( Hebrew: מצדה metsada, 'fortress') is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau, akin to a mesa.

Abandoned castle azriel