Masada is a flat-topped mountain rising 450 meters above the western shore of the Dead Sea, fortified by Herod the Great as a personal refuge and made immortal by the 960 Jewish rebels who, according to Josephus Flavius, held it against the Roman army in 73 CE. Their story, told by Josephus Flavius, ends with a mass suicide rather than surrender, and the phrase “Masada shall not fall again” became one of the defining declarations of modern Israel.
Herod’s Palace
Herod built Masada as a fortress-palace of extraordinary luxury. The Northern Palace, built in three tiers on the cliff face, included reception halls, bathhouses with Roman-style hypocaust heating, and frescoed walls. Storerooms held enough food and water to withstand years of siege. A massive cistern system collected rainwater from the rare desert floods and channeled it into underground reservoirs. The engineering was designed for a single purpose: to keep one man alive and comfortable in the most inhospitable landscape in the country.
Great Revolt
After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, a group of Jewish rebels known as the Sicarii fled to Masada and held it for three years. The Roman Tenth Legion besieged the fortress, building a massive ramp on the western side to bring a battering ram to the walls. When the Romans breached the wall in 73 CE (some scholars argue 74 CE), they found the defenders dead. According to Josephus, the rebel leader Elazar ben Ya’ir convinced his followers to take their own lives rather than become Roman slaves. The archaeological evidence is debated, but the narrative has become Israel’s most powerful founding myth.
Sunrise
Masada at sunrise is one of the iconic experiences of visiting Israel. The Snake Path, which climbs the eastern face of the mountain, takes about 45 minutes to an hour, and hikers who start before dawn reach the summit as the sun rises over the Dead Sea and the mountains of Jordan. The light, the silence, and the view are extraordinary. A cable car is available for those who prefer not to climb.
Roman Camps
One of the most remarkable features of Masada is what you see from the summit looking down: the outlines of eight Roman siege camps, still clearly visible in the desert floor 2,000 years later. The Roman Tenth Legion, under the command of Flavius Silva, surrounded Masada with a siege wall (circumvallation) and built eight camps at strategic points around the mountain. The camps, with their rectangular outlines, internal divisions, and gate openings, are the best-preserved Roman siege works in the world. The dry desert climate has preserved them almost exactly as the legionaries left them, and seeing the camps from above, you understand the hopelessness of the defenders’ position: they were surrounded by the most professional army in the ancient world, with nowhere to go.
Eleazar’s Speech
According to Josephus, when it became clear that the Romans would breach the walls, the rebel leader Eleazar ben Ya’ir addressed the defenders. His speech, as Josephus reconstructed it, is one of the most powerful arguments for death over slavery in ancient literature: “Long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone else but only God, who alone is the true and righteous Lord of mankind. The time has now come that bids us prove our determination by our deeds… Let our wives die before they are abused, and our children before they have tasted of slavery; and after we have slain them, let us bestow that glorious benefit upon one another mutually.” The 960 defenders, Josephus writes, killed their families and then themselves, with only two women and five children hidden in a water cistern surviving to tell the story.
The historicity of the mass suicide is debated. Josephus was not present, and his dramatic account serves his own literary purposes. Archaeological evidence is ambiguous: 28 skeletons were found in a cave below the southern cliff, but their identity is uncertain. What is not debated is the power of the story. Masada became a symbol of Jewish resistance and the determination never to be enslaved again, and the phrase “Masada shall not fall again” became a motto of the Israeli military.
Ostraca: The Lottery of Death
During Yigael Yadin’s excavation in the 1960s, eleven small pottery shards (ostraca) were found near the synagogue, each inscribed with a single name. One of them bore the name “ben Ya’ir,” possibly Eleazar ben Ya’ir himself. Yadin believed these were the lots used in the final act described by Josephus: the defenders divided themselves into groups of ten, and each group chose one man by lot to kill the other nine. The last ten then drew lots again, and the final man was the only one who had to take his own life. This system was designed to solve a profound religious problem: suicide is forbidden in Judaism. By using a lottery, only one person out of 960 would technically commit suicide. The rest would die at the hands of another, which, in the desperate logic of that final night, was considered a lesser transgression.
Not all scholars accept Yadin’s interpretation. The shards may have been used for rationing or other administrative purposes. But the discovery of named ostraca at the precise location described by Josephus remains one of the most haunting finds in Israeli archaeology.
Scroll of Ezekiel
Among the most significant finds at Masada was a scroll fragment discovered in the synagogue. The fragment contained chapters from the Book of Ezekiel, including the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37). In the vision, God brings the prophet to a valley full of dry bones and asks: “Son of man, can these bones live?” God commands Ezekiel to prophesy, and the bones come together, tendons and flesh appear, and God breathes life into the bodies: “These bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel’” (Ezekiel 37:11-12).
The symbolism of finding this text at Masada is hard to overstate. Masada was the last stronghold to fall in the Great Revolt against Rome. Its fall in 73 CE marked the end of an era in Jewish history: the Temple had been destroyed, Jerusalem was in ruins, and Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was over. For nearly two thousand years, the Jewish people lived in exile, and the dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision became a metaphor that echoed through the centuries. For many, the vision found its most devastating parallel in the Holocaust, when the valleys of Europe were filled with the bones of six million Jews during World War II. And yet, just three years after the end of the war, the State of Israel was established. The dry bones lived. The scroll found at Masada, with its promise of national resurrection, turned out to describe a future that no one standing on this mountain in 73 CE could have imagined.
Visit with Hoshen Tours
Masada is a highlight of any private tour in Israel. Our licensed guides bring this fortress to life with vivid storytelling, combining it with the Dead Sea, Ein Gedi, and the Judean Desert for a day that covers heroism, nature, and the lowest point on earth.