Day 6 - Masada and Dead Sea

Masada

View from the Bus

The drive to Masada was spectacular. There were beautiful sand dunes and rock formations rising from the desert floor.  Deserts don't typically strike me as breathtaking, but the Masada desert is an eye catching exception.

The caves visible in the top right are similar to the ones where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. The scrolls were found in clay jars in this region.

Driving through the desert region we saw camels and other signs of life in the form of simple dwellings. Muslims live in the sparsely populated communities without some of the conveniences and utilities of the modern society.

 The arid, desert region is ideal for growing dates. We passed a number of date palm tree farms like the one pictured here.

Since the Dead Sea is located about 15 miles east of Jerusalem, along the border between Israel and Jordan, there are remnants of past Jordanian occupation in the region. There are minefield warning signs and abandoned military barracks similar to those found in the Golan Heights region that remind you that the Israel of today was shaped by bloody conflicts of yesterday.

Defunct military barracks

The Rocktop Fortress of Masada

Natural beauty on the mesa called Masada. Softer limestone cliffs eroded away, leaving this stone mesa rising 1,300 feet above its surroundings and guarded by sheer rock walls.

Masada means “fortress” and that is the role it played for both Herod the Great and the Jewish resisters who held out here during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome.

A model of Herod's palace a top the mesa.

Excavated lower portion of the palace

View of the Dead Sea from the fortress

Just to the south of the Northern Palace is a very well-preserved Roman bathhouse. You can walk through the multiple rooms as the ancients did, starting in the changing room and then moving through a series of rooms, each of which offered a bathing experience warmer than the last.

The Western Palace was the first royal residence built here. Herod installed mosaic floors like those preserved in the inner rooms of the Western Palace. 

Eventually Herod built a second royal palace on the north side of Masada, where afternoon shade promised cooler temperatures.

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Herod the Great is responsible for the majority of the remains you can see atop this forty-acre mesa. He used the natural defenses of the butte as the foundation for a luxury palace and lookout station that doubled as a safe house to which he could flee if his relationship deteriorated either with his Jewish subjects or with his Roman patrons.

Water remained an issue since no spring or well served Masada. Consequently, Herod built a rainwater capacity of 1.4 million cubic feet. To supply water in this arid setting, a sophisticated system channeled winter rainfall from nearby wadis into huge cisterns quarried low into the northwest of the mountain. Water was then carried by men and beasts of burden up winding paths to reservoirs on the summit. The lower cisterns alone are estimated to have a capacity of 38,000 cubic metres.The natural defense, food, and water available at Masada made it the perfect place to survive during a siege. And that was just what drew the Jewish resisters to it during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome.

After the Romans defeated Jerusalem in AD 70, some of the Jewish soldiers fled to Masada. After obtaining control of the place, they converted portions of it for their religious needs. This was the era in which the synagogue and ritual bathing station were added to the architecture of Masada.

 

When Rome showed up in AD 72, they built a wall that encircled the Masada fortress and housed soldiers in base camps along the wall. You can still see the remains of the wall and camps at the base of the mesa. The Romans initiated the construction of a siege ramp on the west side of Masada to bring a battering ram to assault the defensive walls considering the Jewish people could entrench themselves in the rather self-sustaining fortress for some time.

As the Roman soldiers made final preparation for the assault on Masada, the Jewish families agreed to an unthinkable plan. According to the first-century historian, Josephus, when defeat was inevitable the leader of the Jewish rebels gave two impassioned speeches persuading his companions to cast lots to kill each other rather than be taken prisoner. When the Romans stormed the summit, they found the bodies of 960 occupants. The only survivors were two women and five children who had hidden in a cistern.

The only account of the fall of Masada and the mass suicide of its occupants comes from Josephus. Surprisingly, the Jewish rabbis who wrote the Talmud did not record the event. Like other historians of antiquity, Josephus was known for his literary embellishments, and scholars have questioned the credibility of his dramatic account especially given its similarity to a speech and plan involving Josephus, himself, during a previous battle against the Romans that yielded a fortified city yielding to a siege by the Romans.

Rather than accept the rhetoric of Josephus, modern historians favour a more chaotic climax at Masada, with some Jewish rebels fighting to the death, some taking their own lives and others trying to hide. Furthermore, a research report in 2016 concluded that the ramp was never completed and therefore could not have been used to capture the fortress.

Dead Sea

When you stand on the shore of the beautiful and forbidding Dead Sea, you are standing at the lowest point on the surface of the earth – 1,300 feet below sea level. And when you touch its water, you are experiencing one of the most chemically laden lakes on earth, with salt content approaching 33% (nearly nine times that of the ocean). It is one of the most unusual bodies of water in the world. It is so loaded with minerals that no fish can live in it. It is so dense that bathers can lie back on its surface and read a newspaper.

While the deepest part of the Dead Sea is over one thousand feet, it is estimated that unconsolidated bedrock below this body of water lies another twenty thousand feet down, making this the deepest tear in the surface of the earth. Water arrives in the basin primarily via the Jordan river.

Upriver demands have curtailed inbound flow to less than 5% of what it was in Bible times, resulting in a rapidly dropping lake level.  The only outlet for the water is evaporation which contributes to a perpetual haze that fills the Dead Sea basin on hot summer days and the formation of sinkholes that you will see adjacent to the road. Since the late 1980s the landscape around the sea has been reshaped by thousands of sinkholes — caused by fresh water from the mountains dissolving underground levels of salt.

Sinkhole craters along the coast of the Dead Sea

Most people seek the beautiful blue-green colored water for its therapeutic value along with the cosmetic value of the mud. The Dead Sea’s therapeutic qualities attracted Herod the Great. Its minerals and sticky black mud provided balms for Egyptian mummies and cosmetics for Cleopatra. Now regional health resorts treat psoriasis and arthritis, its skin-care products are marketed worldwide, and its industrial evaporation pans harvest potash and other minerals.

Not to mention the undeniable temptation of “swimming” in a body of water that does not allow you to sink. The high concentration of minerals (predominantly magnesium chloride) provides the buoyancy that keeps bathers suspended.

Despite the aforementioned benefits, you have to be cautious against ingesting or getting the water in your eyes as you will experience unforgettable discomfort.

The Dead Sea region has many biblical connections. Here, though their locations are unknown, the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God with “sulphur and fire” and Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the destruction (Genesis 19:24-26).

The Bible mentions this body of water under a variety of names, including Salt Sea, Eastern Sea, and Sea of the Arabah. The most striking mention of the Dead Sea occurs in Ezekiel 47:8-12, where its change is used to illustrate the dramatic refashioning of the world that the Messiah will bring at the end of time. In this vision, Ezekiel sees a deepening water stream flowing from the temple in Jerusalem. It flows in the Dead Sea and completely changes the ecosystem. The lifeless inland lake without fruit trees or fishermen becomes a life-filled inland lake.