Masada

One morning, we drove east from Jerusalem and visited Masada National Park. It’s an ancient fortress built on top of a massive 1,300-foot-high plateau in the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Who would build a fortress in a place like that? Who else but Herod the Great. He actually built two palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified the entire place between 37 and 31 BCE. This trip has certainly shown me why Herod was known for his colossal building projects.  

Masada is such a large complex that I found it a bit overwhelming. It has had multiple excavations but there are plenty more to do. As such, I’ve decided to limit my posts to my two main thoughts when I visited Masada. My first thought was that I know that Herod was a great builder, but WHY build at Masada? I mean, there had to be better places that would have been easier, cheaper, and closer to other amenities.

I took the first photo while waiting for the cable car to take us up to Masada. I suppose the first answer for building there was that it was highly defensible. Sure, but what if I wanted to run down for a six-pack?

There was no good way, without a drone, to really capture Masada. I’ve inserted an online photo for that purpose. This photo explains Masada better than I can. The Dead Sea is on the left and the cable car landing is just off the plateau on the left side. That’s where we started and we walked most of the plateau.

The 3rd photo is my view from the top towards the Dead Sea. You could certainly see an approaching enemy.

The next photo is another online photo. We visited storehouses, barracks, residences, the church or meeting space, and many more buildings and spaces of unknown purpose.

The last photo was a church or synagogue. But what you should notice is the dark black line on the left side of the rock wall. This was done all over Masada. The wall below the line is as it was found on excavation. The construction above that line has been done after excavation but most likely with the same original rocks.