Day 8 Part 3 On Top of Masada

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...

Day 8 Part 2

Anticipation builds as we drive up the long road to Masada.  There it is, right in front of us.  My eyes eagerly try to take it all in.  There isn't a lot to see from the floor of the Dead Sea Valley.  I assume there will be more on top.  Part of the situation is that I really don't know what to look for or what I am looking at.  That will change before long.

The parking area is beautiful, lots of palm trees and wide paved areas that allow our big fat buses to navigate easily, not always the case in the places we have been.  

The visitor's center at the base of Masada is beautiful, shiny and modern.  

The view of the cable cars that ascend to the top of this mountain, butte, whatever it is, is amazing.  

There is a skinny little trail that "snakes" it's way up the side of Masada is called "The Serpent's Trail" I assume for the way it switchbacks it's way up.

I ponder going up by that means momentarily.  I quickly decide not to for a few reasons.  First, I don't want to spend most of my time getting there only to have to turn around and go back down.  Second, it is hot today and I don't want to melt into a greasy spot half way up the mountain and just ascending all the stairs to get into the visitor's center tells me that it will be a long trip.  The trail gets the full brunt of the sun on the east side and there is nothing to hint of shade.  Third, I am just so excited to get to the top and see what I can see.

I am a little disappointed to not see the siege ramp the Romans built to conquer Masada.  Apparently time and the elements have worn it away through the centuries.  Hard to believe what must have been a massive construction project just gone without apparently a trace.  

As nice as the visitor's center is, I don't look around too much as I want to get in line for the first cable car headed up, which I do.  Others are using the restrooms and looking around, so I am the first of our group to get into a car and soon I am on my way up.  By the way, Indiana Jolie has begun a new fascination with taking pictures of the commodes we are encountering.  See if you would know which "button" to push.

The view as I ascend in the cable car is amazing.  Immediately you can see little rock formations at even intervals all around the mountain that we learn are the remains of the Roman camps that were posted to eliminate the Jews from escaping.  There is one right at the place where you board the cable cars.  It must have been handy for the Romans who were besieging Masada to have the Visitors Center so close.

 The view of the surrounding area is fascinating as it reminds me of the South Dakota "Badlands" with it's ruggedness and broken landscape.  It almost looks like a city that is in ruins.  

The Dead Sea is also amazing to see at this vantage.  The narrow part is so narrow that the Dead Sea is almost two separate bodies of water because of the vast amount of water the Sea is losing every year.  We also see south into the haze where the tip of Israel touches the Red Sea.  Every bit of it is fascinating.

It does not take the cable car very long to get to the top and I am soon getting out and waiting for the rest of our group.  I walk the catwalk to the entrance of Masada which is accessed through a stone gateway.  

Inside the gateway is some welcome shade and two benches, one on either side of the opening.  Filling the benches are some shirtless, sweaty, red, exhausted young men who took the Serpent Trail up the side of the mountain.  I decide it was the better part of wisdom to take the cable car.  I reach for my bottle of water in my satchel to reassure myself that I will not die of thirst while we are looking around, a thought that occurs to me as I see these young men looking very dehydrated.

It is not long and the second cable car arrives full of people from our group.  We are all excited and noisy in our conversations taking in the views, snapping pictures and anticipating what is next.  

We are invited to enter Masada.  It is interesting, not like I thought it would be.  We enter about mid mountain top.  There is a HUGE amount of land up here!  Most of it is plain and vacant.  

To the north there are many ruins and Indiana Jolie and I cannot wait to take more pictures of rocks as there are many here.  There are not nearly as many rocks in Jerusalem which is confusing to us as we do not know what to take pictures of.  Here we are in our element.  Oh yes, many rocks. And we will photograph them all.

To the south, there is a large wide vacant area which we are asked to gather in.  Those who got there early have taken all the shade and sitting area.  I am left to sit in the sun which is making its presence known.  

For the first time on the trip I decide to unzip the legs off my adventuring pants to make them into shorts.  My blazingly white legs blinds my wife and makes people everywhere put on their sunglasses.  

It feels amazingly better...for about a minute and then I am just hot again and worrying about sunburn as I did not sunscreen my legs that morning.  I turn on my little blue receiver and put on my ear bud so I can listen to the lecture.

Dr. Marc Turnage is lecturing on the history of Masada.  It is so very interesting.  I will probably get some of it wrong and no doubt leave a lot out so I encourage any readers to "google" Masada for some much better information.  

The quick and probably inaccurate version of it all is, that Masada was Herod's idea.  It was his winter retreat.  Herod was as much a genius as he was ruthless.  He found ways to gather water in abundance to fill his saunas and pools to sustain him and is entourage during their stays here.  In one of the most arid places on the planet, Herod could luxuriate in hot water pools and saunas at will.  He built a three level winter palace on the north end of Masada that is simply amazing.  To supply this palace with water, he carved trenches around the slopes of Masada to catch the run off of rain which ran all along the sides of the mountain into tunnel openings that led inside the mountain depositing the water in cisterns which supplied the water needs of Herod.  They have little working scale models of this that demonstrate the effectiveness of this invention right there.  

You can pour a ladle of water against the side of this scale model of Masada and sure enough the water flows down the side, into the trench and into these little holes that take the water inside.  

Everywhere you see something that Herod built, you will find ways of collecting water for his pools and saunas.  He loved his water.  On our first day of touring at Ceasarea we visited the aquaduct that transported water from 8 miles away to fill his pools with fresh water at his seaside summer palace.  

Dr. Turnage disputes the legend that the Jewish resistance who occupied Masada long after Herod died in the second century committed suicide.  This is interesting to me as I had always heard it as an established fact.  He disputes this due to the religious nature of these resistance fighter Jews.  It is interesting.  

I am getting impatient to actually see what we came to see and I fidget a bit, my backside is also quite uncomfortable sitting on a rock this long.  I think I explained on the day we visited the Mount of the Beattiudes that all the rocks in Israel lack a smooth place to sit on.  It is true.  No matter the location or the size of the rock, there is always a pointy projection that makes your sitting time short as the cost/benefit analysis of sitting versus standing tilts towards standing soon after attempting to sit on these Israel rocks.  It is unexplainable how so many rocks can lack a smooth place to sit, they simply defy you to be comfortable.

Ah, but enough about my aching you-know-what.  We are going to start our tour of Herod's winter palace!

Day 8 Part 1 - Masada and the Dead Sea

We rise early (as usual) to get down to breakfast.  Breakfast is beginning to have that familiar and comfortable feeling of routine.  Few surprises anymore, I have scouted out several things I really like and have enjoyed them most mornings.  Just don't fall for the "yogurt" in the familiar little containers with the foil top.  It's not really yogurt, it's buttermilk but thicker.  I kept thinking that a different label would be yogurt, but they are all the same.  Not my favorite. 

At breakfast the realization that our tour of Israel is quickly coming to an end begins to take hold.  We have seen so much, experienced so much, met some new friends, how can this end?  The thought is intentionally pushed aside as I think of what we are doing today, we will see Masada.  I have wanted to experience Masada and the Dead Sea for so very long.  I am so stoked to be able to realize this dream and it will be today.  

We eagerly board the buses in anticipation of traveling to the southern region of Israel.  Galilee seems so long ago.  Jerusalem has been so intense, so much, so close, everywhere we have turned a new experience.  The buses pull out into nearly empty Jerusalem highways, I guess this is earlier than most Israeli's get up.  We head south.

The geography of Israel is fascinating.  We do not drive very far when our guide, Eli, tells us that we will soon be seeing a distinct change in the landscape.  It will be much more arid, less vegetation, more barren.  Frankly, after leaving the region of Galilee I though Jerusalem was pretty stark in comparison.  Sure enough, almost like crossing over a line on the road, we are definitely in a desert.  The Judean Wilderness.  There is virtually nothing green on the hillsides and no water to see.

It isn't until we enter this austere landscape that we begin to see bedouin people who herd goat and other livestock over this barren terrain.  It makes you wonder what they find for their animals to eat.  They still live a nomadic lifestyle in tents and sometimes shacks that look a little more permanent, like a home base.

What we cannot tell as we drive other than the diesel engines are almost quiet, is that we are driving downhill.  When we come to the Dead Sea, we will be at the lowest point of dry land on the entire planet.  We pass a sign that tells us we are at sea level.  Since Jerusalem is 2555 feet above sea level, we have already lost a fair amount of elevation.  We will lose 1401 more feet by the time we get to the Dead Sea.  Since this lake is the lowest point, nothing drains away from it.  Even though this is true, the lake is drying up.  So much of the water from the Jordan river is diverted as drinking water to Israel's thirsty cities and so much is used for agriculture, very little actually makes it to the Dead Sea.  Much more water evaporates each day than is replenished.  Our guide tells us that the lake has been losing 10 feet of water every year for the past 14 years.  If you look at the maps in the back of your Bible you will see the narrowest part of the lake just below the middle.  The water level is so low that this narrow part is nearly all dry.  The lake is almost two separate lakes at this point.  This is rather interesting as it would fulfill biblical prophecy.  

Because of the drying of the lake, there is some concern.  There is some talk of putting in a water pipeline from the Red Sea which is only 80 miles away from the southern end.  This seems like it would not be difficult as it would be downhill the whole way.  The saline level of the lake is about 35% right now.  Adding sea water would reduce the saltiness of the lake and perhaps bring new life to the lake, another yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy of the Old Testament (Ezek. 47:9).

The Israeli's don't care for the name "Dead Sea", they have never called it that.  I sympathize with this.  How would we like it if we saw on Israeli maps of the USA such names of our national treasures like Mt. Rushmore - "Four Dead Guys" or the Statue of Liberty - "The Green Lady"?  The name is a relatively modern label.  "The Salt Sea", "The Sea of Arabah", "The Asphalt Sea", "The Sea of Sodom" are some of the names for the body of water in antiquity.  The label "Dead" is not really accurate.  There is actually some small fish that live in the lake, which is contrary to what I have always been told.  There is also a huge amount of agriculture that takes place all around the lake.  They grow bananas, and some of the largest vegetables anywhere right here.  

The Israeli's discovered that growing fruit and vegetables in the brackish waters "distress" the trees / plants in such a way that they grow amazing produce.  This totally messes with my mind.  Pictures of huge melons, squash and other produce testify to this amazing contradiction.  The acres and acres of agriculture on the north end of the lake surprise me as the highway drops to the valley floor.  

I am beginning to feel the heat of the outside warm the bus.  This may be the warmest day yet.  I wore my cargo pants with the zip-off legs in anticipation of it being hot today.  So far, the legs have stayed on the pants the whole trip.  If I find it necessary to zip them off it will justify purchasing them in the first place.  
We drive on and on by the shore of the lake, rugged mountains on our west side not far away, the lake and the country of Jordan to the east.  

It is interesting that it looks like there are communities on the far side of the lake from us.  Sure enough, they are Arab communities on the Jordan side.  I wonder where they get enough drinkable water to make life possible here.  The land of Israel continues to amaze.

We pass the community of Qumran, near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  

We pass the Kidron Valley where it begins and goes clear up to the Temple Mount.  We pass En Gedi where David hid in the caves from King Saul.  

Finally in the distance I see it, the destination I have been waiting for, Masada!