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Masada is Hebrew for "fortress". It is the name of an ancient fortification located in Israel on top of an isolated rock cliff on the eastern edge of the Judean desert overlooking the Dead Sea.
The cliffs on the east edge of Masada are about 450 meters high, dropping off to the Dead Sea, and the cliffs on the west are about 100 meters high; the natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult. The top of the plateau is flat and rhomboid shaped, approximately 600 by 300 meters. There was a casemate wall around the top of the plateau totalling 1400 meters long and 4 meters thick with many towers, and the fortress included storehouses, cisterns that were refilled by rainwater, barracks, palaces and an armory. Three narrow, winding paths led from below to fortified gates.
According to Flavius Josephus, Herod the Great built Masada between 37Centuries: 2nd century BC 1st century BC 1st century Decades: 80s BC 70s BC 60s BC 50s BC 40s BC 30s BC 20s BC 10s BC 0s 10s 20s Years: 42 BC 41 BC 40 BC 39 BC 38 BC 37 BC 36 BC 35 BC 34 BC 33 BC 32 BC Events Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa created the "portus J and 31 BCECenturies: 2nd century BC 1st century BC 1st century Decades: 80s BC 70s BC 60s BC 50s BC 40s BC 30s BC 20s BC 10s BC 0s 10s 20s Years: 36 BC 35 BC 34 BC 33 BC 32 BC 31 BC 30 BC 29 BC 28 BC 27 BC 26 BC Events Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus becomes Roman C as a refuge for himself should his JewThe word Jew is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to either a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or a member of the Jewish culture or ethnicity. This article discusses the term as describing an ethnic group; for aish subjects rise against him. In 66Alternate uses, see Number 66 Centuries: 1st century BC 1st century 2nd century Decades: 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 100s 110s Years: 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 Events Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire. The Zealots take Jerusalem and th CE, at the beginning of the Jewish uprising against the Romans60 and 400 with major cities. During this time only Dacia and Mesopotamia were added to the Empire but were lost before 300. The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman state in the centuries following its reorganization under t, a group of Jewish rebels called the SicariiSicarii is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, to the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea, even resorting to murder to obtain their objective. Under their took Masada from the Roman garrison stationed there. In 70Alternate uses, see Number 70 Centuries: 1st century BC 1st century 2nd century Decades: 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 100s 110s 120s Years: 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 Events The building of the Colosseum starts (approximate date). Pliny the Elder CE they were joined by additional Sicarii and their families who were expelled from JerusalemCapitals in Asia For alternate uses see Jerusalem (disambiguation Jerusalem ( Modern Hebrew: Yerushalayim Biblical Hebrew: Arabic: al-Quds see also Names of Jerusalem) is an ancient Middle Eastern city of key importance to the religions of Judaism, Christ by the other Jews living there shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, and for the next two years used Masada as their base for raiding and harassing Roman and Jewish settlements alike.
Then, in 73 CE, the Roman governor of Judea, Lucius Flavius Silva , marched against Masada with the Roman legion Legio X Fretensis and laid siege to the fortress. They built a circumvallation wall and then a rampart against the western face of the plateau, using thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth. Josephus does not record any major attempts by the Sicarii to counterattack the besiegers during this process, a significant difference from his accounts of other sieges against Jewish fortresses, suggesting that perhaps the Sicarii lacked the equipment or skills to fight the Roman legion.
The ramp was complete in the spring of 74 CE after approximately two to three months of siege, allowing them to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram. When the Romans entered the fortress, however, they discovered that its approximately one thousand defenders had set all the buildings ablaze and committed mass suicide rather than face certain capture or defeat by their enemies. This account of the siege of Masada was apparently related to Josephus by two women who survived the suicide by hiding inside a cistern along with five children.
Due to recent archaeological findings many historians no longer believe that there was an organized mass suicide at Masada, although there is still evidence to suggest that the defenders of Masada set its buildings on fire when the wall was breached and it is plausible that many individuals did kill themselves. Josephus appears to have embellished the conclusion of the tale, inventing an overnight pause before Silva's final assault, as a frame to his literary setpiece of the heroic last speeches of the leader, Eliezar, (including on one the immortality of the soul), a stock device of ancient historians. Nonetheless, the siege of Masada has become a popular story of heroic resolve in the face of oppression, and the more questionable details of Sicarii conduct are often overlooked when it is told today.
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