The group begins to walk up the incline to the north end of Masada. There are a lot of people on Masada today, I can imagine it is that way most days, it is a fascinating place. There is nothing to do but join the herd of turtles moving slowly through the Masada complex.
Many of the buildings, rooms and walls have been reconstructed through the archaeological excavations. The reconstructors traced a black line against the walls showing what was original and what was reconstructed on top of what was left standing. Most places it seems that the original walls were only about 3 feet high.
The exterior walls of the buildings have a very rough texture, but you have to remember that they were once plastered over. For some reason, some of the columns still retain some of this plaster cover from about 3-4 feet down to the ground. I don't know if the columns were protected by being buried in the wreckage of Masada or if there is another explanation. Many of the interior walls retain the smooth plaster covering as well as the rich paintings they call frescoes.
We wind our way through the buildings a little at a time. There is an amazing complex of rooms and spaces, much more than I ever imagined. Perhaps one of the most fascinating things to me was Herod's saunas. We are standing on the highest level of three levels of Masada. These saunas have suspended floors held up by small pillars around which water was added. Below this level fires were stoked to heat the water. The steam would be channeled through hollow bricks that lined the interior of the walls of the top level sauna.
The hollow bricks were plastered over and painted in fresco style. The steam would enter the sauna through vents throughout the room and make Herod happy. The interior of these rooms were very nice, benches chiseled out of the stone lining the perimeter of the rooms and smooth tiled floors. It would be fantastically luxurious even today.
We move to the most northern end of Masada which reveals a fantastic view of the Dead Sea Valley.
From here you can see the remains of the little Roman camps that continue around the mountain preventing escape of the Jewish rebels. I look down to the second and first levels of Herod's winter retreat. The first level protrudes out further than the two levels above it with a beautiful patio that invites one to sit and enjoy the incredible views.
There are little catwalks that one can take to go down to these lower levels. I wish for the time! We of course do not have time to visit all of these levels, our time on top is about half gone.
Check out this website for incredible pictures and views: http://www.masada.org.il/
We look down the slopes of Masada and see the trenching systems that diverted the precious water into the tunnels that looks like caves in the sides of the mountains.
We work our way around to the west side of Masada and I see something that really excites me. The siege ramp!
The Roman siege ramp that was constructed to breach the mountain stronghold and kill the Jewish rebels still exists! I don't know why I never considered that it might be on the other side of Masada, but there it is. What a feat of engineering! It makes so much sense that the ramp was constructed on the west side. First that is the shadier side of Masada, second, it is a much shorter distance to the top than the front side and the mountains that rise behind Masada give the advantage of giving a higher elevation to begin construction that the valley floor. The siege ramp is not intact, the center of it has washed through by erosion over the centuries, but both ends, clear up to the point of breaching the defensive wall of Masada are still quite intact and still there. It is amazing.
Continuing on the west wall and walking south, we see several curious rooms with little square boxes in the walls. The "cubbies" are not real big, but there are many of them.
I wonder what they were used for. A sign soon explains this. They were homes for doves which provided food for the Jews who were cut off from resupply or escape! How genius! I wondered what they ate, it would be hard to believe that enough food could be stored to exist for the number of people (nearly 1,000) and the number of years (3) they held out on this mountain top.
It is interesting to note that the Jews holding out on top of Masada were not really a threat in any significant way to Rome. They were too few and the rest of Palestine was already conquered. The Roman general, Hadrian just wanted to completely defeat the Jews and wipe out any hope they might harbor for any new revolts and in the process send a message to any of Rome's enemies that Rome would stop at nothing to completely crush any challenge to their supremacy. Masada was more symbolic than anything but still it had to go.
Once the Romans breached the top of Masada, legend tells that all they found were already dead Jews. All that work to build a ramp, lose untold numbers of Roman soldiers who daily took the assaults of the Jews who had the height advantage and could lob mortars of stone down upon them for the irony of not having to loose their swords in the end. The Romans simply withdrew and left the country, mission accomplished.
As I come to the point of the breached wall, we are told that our time is over and we must catch the next cable car down so we can move on to our next destination. I dash to the breaching point and look down upon the siege ramp and try to imagine the drama that unfolded here some 2,000 years ago. Sandaled Roman feet tromped this very spot. I pull my camera out to snap some much desired pictures. I turn it on only to be told my battery is dead! Argh! We are being urged to leave and I do not have time to dig in my stuff and replace it. I want to scream. I want to spend the rest of the day here.
With reluctance, I turn to join our group and ride the cable car down. My mind is filled with imaginations of the drama that filled this place that is now crawling with tourist pilgrims like myself. What a fantastic place.
We ride the cable car down, it is a little anti-climatic in comparison and leaves me with a little angst about not getting to see all I wanted to see. When will I ever get the chance to be here again? This is a familiar feeling that we experience each day we are in this incredible land. I think you could spend a lifetime here and not see it all.
I do take a few minutes as we wait for the group to assemble to look through the visitors center. There is of course the gift shop but also some museum areas that show replicas (the real ones are always at the national museum) of the pots and archaeological finds. It is interesting that Masada was identified after hundreds of years in about 1849 but it wasn't until the 1960's that Masada was excavated. This is probably a good thing as the science and practices of archaeology had improved quite a bit and as a result, more history has no doubt been preserved.
We head out to the buses to go to our next stop, Qumran where we will have lunch. I am kind of hungry...
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