Masada, Qumran, Dead Sea

Today we drove far south to Masada which is a national symbol of proud defiance and heroic resistance. It is near the south end of the Dead Sea, and guess who built it? If you said “Herod the Great” you’ve been listening. He was the great builder, and being paranoid (or maybe realistic) he built a wonderful and impregnable mountain-top fortress/palace for himself and a few of his favorite wives. (I believe he had 14.) This natural formation was perfect as a kind of desert Gibraltar. If he were to get into real trouble he could flee to this place with a trusted, reduced staff and pretty much live out the rest of his days. He never had to do that, but ironically it provided a great hold-out for his enemies, the zealots who occupied it about 65 years after his death.

In this model of Masada you can see that it was a great mesa flanked by mountains. The fortification wall, watch towers, palaces, living quarters, etc. were built around the perimeter of the mesa and down the north slope which faces you. The large table top of the interior looks shiny on this model. Remember that because it becomes important. It was a high-tech shiny. That’s all I’m saying right now. If you look to the right side, you will also see a siege ramp which also becomes important later.

We rode a cable car to the top. What a view and what an elevation change! Our ears popped three times on the way up. Look closely and you will see three big squares on the desert surface below. Those were siege camps. The biggest one is the hardest to see. It is nearest the line of palms and would have served as the headquarters for the sieging Romans. Also notice a dark brown line running around the mountain. That is the siege wall. We’ll get back to all that.

We had to “walk the plank” from the cable car to the gate into Masada. Quite a breezy view from there.

Inside the gate we saw the expanse of the fairly flat top of Masada. It was hot; about 110 degrees. Makes you start thinking about water.

Water would be a big need in a place like this. Remember that down the north slope Herod had built a beautiful white marble palace so any guests coming from the more populated north would be able to see it glistening on the hillside. Also, the north slope would have had a bit more shade. This model is a cut-away of only the tip of Masada.

Up on top were additional palatial rooms sporting bright frescos the remains of which can be seen here. So let’s go on to the story. When the Jews revolted in 66 (Remember the cruel and callous treatment they got from the governor of Caesarea?) The Romans got angry and sent in MANY of their best soldiers with the mission to totally devastate the temple and the national pride of the Jews. Jewish rebels successfully drove back the Romans a couple of times and they thought this might be the start of independence, but they were sadly mistaken. One place after another fell to the Romans, and finally 900 rebels with their families ended up here in Masada. We know there were women there because of hair braids and beauty items found at the site.

Well, the Romans figured this would be a pretty easy siege since there was no visible source of water, and 900 people would need nearly 30,000 gallons of water in one month. So the Romans built a wall around the mountain, made nice comfy camps for themselves and sat back to watch Masadan tongues lolling in the dust. But one night they awoke to the sound of a waterfall. They couldn’t believe their eyes! A torrent of water was spilling over the rim of Masada. It was a little surplus of water the rebels figured they could use to taunt the Romans. Well the Romans were scratching their heads: “Where on earth did they get all that water?”

Flashback to Petra… Remember the nomadic Nabateans who became wealthy, artistic, and technological by opening trade routes with the East and running thousands of camel caravans? Well they learned a secret of the desert and developed a technology that Herod borrowed in the building of Masada. Camels can go about five days without water, but then you’d better have 30 gallons or so in a Big Gulp cup for your camel or he may croak. Camels are valuable, $3,000 for a cheap one on up to over $100,000 for the sportier models. So the Nabateans could not cross the desert with their camel convoys unless they established splashy watering holes. They did, and here’s how they did it.

The desert they had to cross had very fine dust which expanded when wet. Once the surface was wet, the water did not perk, it just ran off. That’s what caused flash flooding. Even the most arid deserts get some rain each year so the challenge is how to harvest the water and store it for the long dry spells. The observant and ingenious Nabateans would clear an area of all rocks, leaving only the dusty surface which they smoothed along a slope. Then every three meters or so they installed parallel channels to catch the water that the smooth surface was shedding. All the channels flowed into a cistern that collected a great amount of water in a very short time. Herod was an Edomite, a descendent of Esau, as were the Nabateans. He used water harvesting on the top of Masada.

Remember the fairly smooth, sloped top of Masada? Back in that time, the surface would have been picked free of stones, channeled, and used as a giant water catchment system. Here we are walking down steps into the cistern on the top of Masada.

This is the amazingly huge interior capable of holding thousands and thousands of gallons. Oh, excuse me. Did I say “the” cistern? There were actually at least 25 such cisterns. A recent airplane crash on the top of Masada unearthed another one. Out here in the middle of the desert on the top of a mountain with no spring, they had all the water they needed for human and animal consumption and even for several baths. Those old-timers were just way smarter than we give them credit for.

Well, the Romans were bummed that sitting on their rear ends was not going to put any stress on the rebels, so they had to find a way to force them out. With the tenacity of ants, the Romans began building a siege ramp on the western side of Masada which was the shortest. You can see it in this picture. The ramp ended just below the stone wall surrounding the crest of the mesa. I imagine the rebels had fun shooting at the Romans who were sweating in the sun carrying load after load of rock and dirt, but finally the ramp was built. The rebels still had a great wall, but the crafty Romans built a big ugly tower on wheels. It had a battering ram built into it and they started pushing it up the ramp; hard work with rocks and arrows and possibly hot oil raining down on you. But they got the battering ram in place and the rebels' leading elder could see that the wall would soon disintegrate under the crushing blows of the ram.

He told his men to rip the cedar posts from the palaces and build an inner wall behind the wood wall and backfill that with dirt. The battering ram did smash the rock quite easily, but then when it thudded against the spongier dirt-backed wood, the Roman commander smacked his palm to his forehead and said some Roman, tough-guy version of “Shoot!” They couldn’t back the battering tower back down the siege ramp without toppling it, so they were stuck.

The only solution would be to burn the wooden wall. So they threw torches and oil against the wooden wall and the flames began to mount. As if by divine will a wind sprang up and blew the flames against the battering tower which began to burn. Things were not looking good for the Romans, but the rebels thought it was pretty cool. During their celebration, the wind changed and the flames came hard against the wooden wall. The rebels’ leader realized that by morning, the wall would be breached and the 6,000 Roman soldiers would dancing their own jig on top of Masada.

In this synagogue the elder laid out a plan for spoiling the victory for the Romans. These were the very last rebels to fall, so after this night the whole revolt would be over.

The Mr. and the Mrs. are demonstrating how it ended for the rebels… not well. According to the elder’s plan, each man killed his family, then ten men were chosen to kill the rest of the men. Then lots were drawn and one man killed the other nine and then committed suicide. They found the potsherds with the men’s names on them. The elder was one of the ten. The little named clay pieces are on display in the museum at the base of the mountain. When the Romans entered, it was deathly silent. When they saw what the rebels had done, they respected them greatly.

How do we know what happened in that final fateful meeting of the rebels? Two women and five children hid in one of the cisterns. They turned themselves in, and Josephus published the elder’s moving speech.

This is an ibex which was lost from Israel, but their parks department has successfully reintroduced them to Israel. We were lucky to see one at the base of Masada as we left.

Next we stopped at Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. This is one of the scroll caves where Bedouin farmers found 14,000 fragments in August of 1952. Later, archeologists found another 1,000, and over the next 50 years by painstaking work, they pieced together 530 different scrolls. Scholars think that in 68 a Roman soldier found the cave and intentionally ripped up the scrolls. Then weather and wild animals did further damage. It is possible that the Essenes (referred to as “the community”) may have fled before the Romans to join the rebels on Masada. No evidence of violence is found in Qumran.

Here’s the Mr. in his first-ever solo picture. He’s having a “sit-in” to protest the fact that women weren’t allowed in Qumran. The Essenes were very strict about things and any pleasure in life was considered as selling out to desire which could lead to no good. They kept the Sabbath so carefully that it was forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath by going to the bathroom. “Yep, ya just gotta hold it son. Don’t worry, the sun will be down in about four more hours.” Of course, Shabbat does not end (or start) in Israel until the third star is visible, so let’s make that “five hours.”

The Mister’s sit-in ended when he was told to move. He was sitting in the scroll return. Kid you not! See the paper Bill is sending through the hole? This was a place where scrolls could be returned after hours.

Our last stop was for a swim in the Dead Sea, 1300 feet below sea level, lowest spot on earth. The water is so salty that it can take you by surprise. To help the inexperienced this sign tells what to look out for. Mainly, if you try to swim on your stomach you will float so high that it will almost force your face under water. Any salt in your eyes or nose will burn like fire.

I wasn’t too sure about these words belonging next to each other. What do you think?

I really did float higher than usual, and the water had a slippery oily feel to it. It must have been about 95-100 degrees. Quite refreshing, if you don’t think about hot water and salt as being main ingredients for cooking stew.

If this looks like a beauty treatment, it is! This is the same mud that people pay tons for. There were a couple of big barrels sitting around so Ginger and I just slathered it on. We’ll let you decide if it made us more beautiful or not. And I’m not sure why Ginger seems so amused. Could it be my lack of bulging biceps or the fact that I missed a spot? I’ll have to admit it smelled a bit like petroleum, but it washed off easily and did leave our skin with a certain silky softness so coveted by French women.

One last shot out the bus window to show the shoreline of the Dead Sea.