Siege of Masada

Masada has been described as "a lozenge-shaped table-mountain" that is "lofty, isolated, and to all appearance impregnable". According to Josephus, Masada was first constructed by the Hasmoneans. Between 37 and 31 BC Herod the Great fortified it as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt. In 66 AD, at the beginning of the First Jewish–Roman War, a group of Jewish extremists called the Sicarii overcame the Roman garrison of Masada and settled there. The Sicarii were commanded by Eleazar ben Ya'ir, According to Josephus, on Passover, the Sicarii raided Ein Gedi, a nearby Jewish settlement, and killed 700 of its inhabitants. Archaeology indicates that the Sicarii modified some of the structures they found at Masada. These include a building that was modified to function as a synagogue. It may in fact have been a synagogue to begin with, although it did not contain a mikvah or the benches found in other early synagogues. It is one of the oldest synagogues in Israel. == Josephus's narrative ==

camps just outside the circumvallation wall around Masada In 72 AD, the Roman governor of Judaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, led Roman legion X Fretensis, a number of auxiliary units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000 men and women, of whom an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 were fighting men, to lay siege to the 960 people in Masada. The Roman legion surrounded Masada and built a circumvallation wall, before commencing construction of a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau, moving half a million tons of earth. Josephus does not record any attempts by the Sicarii to counterattack the besiegers during this process, a significant difference from his accounts of other sieges of the war. . The ramp was completed in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege. A giant siege tower with a battering ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp, while the Romans assaulted the wall, discharging "a volley of blazing torches against ... a wall of timber", When the Romans entered the fortress, they found it to be "a citadel of death". Cohen speculates that "some Jews killed themselves, some fought to the death, and some attempted to hide and escape. The Romans were in no mood to take prisoners and massacred all whom they found." American archaeologist Jodi Magness has written archaeology cannot prove or disprove the account of Josephus because the human remains found can be interpreted differently. According to Kenneth Atkinson, there is no "archaeological evidence that Masada's defenders committed mass suicide." According to archaeologist Eric H. Cline, Josephus' narrative is impossible because the Romans would have immediately pressed their advantage, leaving no time for Eleazar's speech or the mass suicides. Instead, Cline proposes that the defenders were massacred by Romans. According to military strategist Edward Luttwak, the Roman effort at Masada, deploying vast resources and engineering ingenuity to eliminate a small pocket of resistance in an isolated desert fortress of no strategic importance, may have been intended as a message to those considering rebellion: the Romans would relentlessly pursue and crush rebels, even at great cost, to eradicate any trace of resistance. The Masada site was extensively excavated between 1963 and 1965 by an expedition led by Israeli archaeologist and former military Chief-of-Staff Yigael Yadin. == Masada myth ==

The Masada myth is the early Zionist retelling of the Siege of Masada, a selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus's account, with the Sicarii instead depicted as national heroes, and in which the Sicarii were described as a splinter group of the Zealots. The siege of Masada and the resulting Masada myth is often revered in modern Israel as "a symbol of Jewish heroism". In the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the reported role of a poem about Masada in inspiring the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the story's themes of resilience and isolation resonated with and circulated in Israeli public discourse, youth movements, and film media. According to Klara Palotai, "Masada became a symbol for a heroic 'last stand' for the State of Israel and played a major role for Israel in forging national identity." To Israel, it symbolized the courage of the warriors of Masada, the strength they showed when they were able to keep hold of Masada for almost three years, and their choice of death over slavery in their struggle against an aggressive empire. Masada had become "the performance space of national heritage", the site of military ceremonies. Palotai states how Masada "developed a special 'love affair' with archeology" because the site had drawn people from all around the world to help locate the remnants of the fortress and the battle that occurred there. In works • '''', 1927 poem by Yitzhak Lamdan • The Antagonists (novel), 1971 novel • Masada (miniseries), 1981 American miniseries • The Dovekeepers, 2011 novel • The Dovekeepers, 2015 miniseries ==See also==