Masada: History, Archaeology, Mass Suicide | Middle East And North Africa

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MASADA

Masada Roman ruins
Historians mark the end of the Jewish wars in A.D. 73 when 960 Jewish zealots committed suicide at Masada, rather than surrender and submit to Roman rule, after withstanding a siege by 15,000 Romans for nearly two years (A.D. 72-73). Some regard it as the world's largest known mass suicide (909 died in the mass suicide at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978).

First identified in 1838, this cliff-top fortress of Masada is located in Israel near the Dead Sea and was the site of a last stand during a rebellion against the Romans. A team led by archaeologist Yigael Yadin in the 1960s found out that King Herod (74 B.C.– 4 B.C.) built two palaces with support buildings surrounded by a wall, nearly a mile long, with 27 towers. After a rebellion against the Romans was crushed in A.D. 70, a group called the Zealots occupied the fortress with 960 people and tried to hold it against a Roman army of about 9,000. In A.D. 73 or 74 the Romans succeeded in building a siege ramp up to the wall, and the remaining defenders decided to take their own lives rather than surrender.

Masada (35 miles southeast of Jerusalem) was originally a fortress palace used by King Herod, the builder of the second Jewish temple, built on a mesa which is 300 meter wide, 600 meters long and 450 meters above the Dead Sea. According to the Roman historian Josephus, the Zealots were some of the last holdouts during a Roman campaign to break Jewish resistance in Palestine. It is believed that they lasted as long as they did at Masada because they had a large food and water supply and they carefully rationed what they had.

The Roman general, Flavius Silva, commanding the Tenth Legion, finally breached Masada's wall in A.D. 73 after spending a year building an earthen ramp on the west side of the mesa. When the Romans were about to reach Masada the Jewish commander, Eleazar ben Yair, exhorted his followers in an impassioned speech to commit suicide rather than become Roman slaves.

Eric Meyers at Archaeology Duke University told PBS: “When the Romans attacked Jewish citizens in Caesarea on the coast, the home of their administrative offices in the year 64, there was an enormous outbreak of opposition and hostility in the Jewish community to this distant Roman administrative force. This is really what precipitated the war, which broke up, literally, four years later, and led to the cataclysmic conclusion, the burning of Jerusalem in the year 70. [Source: Eric Meyers, Professor of Religion and Archaeology Duke UniversityFrontline, PBS, April 1998 \=/]

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Masada model
“The Rock of Masada, one of the most glorious places in all Israel, became the major refuge point for some of the most extremist elements opposing Rome. The zealots, and their most ardent supporters, fled right in the middle of the war - 66, 67, 68 - to Masada, where [over 600] of them took residence... in the splendor of this gorgeous place to eke out a futile existence which had such an unhappy ending. \=/

“If one looks to the site of Masada and observes these ruins there, we can see on the northern corner a three-tiered magnificent palace. This is where Herod and his retinue stayed, and they got the cool afternoon breezes there every day, an absolutely beautiful place.... On all the four corners, on the whole edge of the rock, was a wall. And here the zealots located most of their homes when they resettled the place after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. There were the great storerooms in the middle of the rock... full of foodstuffs and an arsenal of weapons.... And you had another palace, and even underground cisterns that were tremendous, the size of football fields, so that water could be provided to this remote place. Here these... Zealots situated themselves for nearly four years after the loss of Jerusalem. And they could observe from their perch upon this rock, the Romans in the six encampments all around them.... \=/

“It was a refuge for Herod, and it became even a greater refuge now for these Zealots following the war, even though the war, for all intents and purposes, had ended in 70 on the 9th of Ab, some time in July. So they went on, and they built little hovels in the casement wall, and they built other little residences in the trappings of Herod's splendor. And they watched Flavius Silva built a ramp on the western side, as it stepped up the mountain. [That] took a long time, and there were six Roman camps all the way around on the eastern side, coming around the northern and southern corners as well. And they watched that, and then the tale gets confusing. The tale gets confusing because we have one major written source, and that's the tale of Josephus himself. And he tells us a story of mass suicide before Flavius Silva and the troops could come up. The Roman general Flavius Silva, who built this ramp, decided suddenly on the day that the ramp was completed to let his soldiers go back and get a good night's sleep before they would invade the camp. And this is one of the clues that tips off modern day scholars and readers of Josephus that this is not the thing you would expect from a brilliant Roman strategist. Send the troops back and have a good meal, a good rest before they take on these 600 some men, women, children. They're not exactly the strongest opposition that you could imagine.” \=/

Websites and Resources: Virtual Jewish Library jewishvirtuallibrary.org/index ; Judaism101 jewfaq.org ; torah.org torah.org ; Chabad,org chabad.org/library/bible ; Bible and Biblical History: ; Biblical Archaeology Society biblicalarchaeology.org ; Bible History Online bible-history.com Bible Gateway and the New International Version (NIV) of The Bible biblegateway.com ; King James Version of the Bible gutenberg.org/ebooks ; Jewish History: ; Complete Works of Josephus at Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org ; Jewish History Timeline jewishhistory.org.il/history Jewish History Resource Center dinur.org ; Center for Jewish History cjh.org ; Jewish History.org jewishhistory.org ; Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu

Josephus (37- after 93 CE): Masada [Jewish War 7:9]

The “Wars of the Jews, Book 7,” Chapter 9, Josephus wrote: “1. (389) Now as Eleazar was proceeding on in his exhortations, they all cut him off short, and made haste to do the work, as full of an unconquerable ardor of mind, and moved with a demoniacal fury. So they went their ways, as one still endeavoring to be before another, and as thinking that this eagerness would be a demonstration of their courage and good conduct, if they could avoid appearing in the last class; so great was the zeal they were in to slay their wives and children, and themselves also! (390) Nor, indeed, when they came to the work itself, did their courage fail them, as one might imagine it would have done, but they then held fast the same resolution, without wavering, which they had upon the hearing of Eleazar's speech, while yet every one of them still retained the natural passion of love to themselves and their families, because the reasoning they went upon appeared to them to be very just, even with regard to those that were dearest to them; (391) for the husbands tenderly embraced their wives, and took their children into their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses to them, with tears in their eyes. [Source: “The Works of Josephus,” translated by William Whiston Hendrickson Publishers, 1987]

Masada

“(392) Yet at the same time did they complete what they had resolved on, as if they had been executed by the hands of strangers, and they had nothing else for their comfort but the necessity they were in of doing this execution to avoid that prospect they had of the miseries they were to suffer from their enemies. (393) Nor was there at length any one of these men found that scrupled to act their part in this terrible execution, but every one of them dispatched his dearest relations. Miserable men indeed were they, whose distress forced them to slay their own wives and children with their own hands, as the lightest of those evils that were before them. (394) So they being not able to bear the grief they were under for what they had done any longer, and esteeming it an injury to those they had slain to live even the shortest space of time after them,-they presently laid all they had in a heap, and set fire to it. (395) They then chose ten men by lot out of them, to slay all the rest; every one of whom laid himself down by his wife and children on the ground, and threw his arms about them, and they offered their necks to the stroke of those who by lot executed that melancholy office; (396) and when these ten had, without fear, slain them all, they made the same rule for casting lots for themselves, that he whose lot it was should first kill the other nine, and after all, should kill himself. Accordingly, all these had courage sufficient to be no way behind one another in doing or suffering; (397) so, for a conclusion, the nine offered their necks to the executioner, and he who was the last of all took a view of all the other bodies, lest perchance some or other among so many that were slain should want his assistance to be quite dispatched; and when he perceived that they were all slain, he set fire to the palace, and with the great force of his hands ran his sword entirely through himself, and fell down dead near to his own relations. (398) So these people died with this intention, that they would leave not so much as one soul among them all alive to be subject to the Romans. (399) Yet there was an ancient woman, and another who was of kin to Eleazar, and superior to most women in prudence and learning, with five children, who had concealed themselves in caverns under ground, and had carried water thither for their drink, and were hidden there when the rest were intent upon the slaughter of one another. (400) Those others were nine hundred and sixty in number, the women and children being withal included in that computation. (401) This calamitous slaughter was made on the fifteenth day of the month Xanthicus [Nisan]. “2. (402) Now for the Romans, they expected that they should be fought in the morning, when accordingly they put on their armor, and laid bridges of planks upon their ladders from their banks, to make an assault upon the fortress, which they did, (403) but saw nobody as an enemy, but a terrible solitude on every side, with a fire within the place as well as a perfect silence So they were at a loss to guess at what had happened. At length they made a shout, as if it had been at a blow given by the battering-ram, to try whether they could bring anyone out that was within; (404) the women heard this noise, and came out of their underground cavern, and informed the Romans what had been done, as it was done, and the second of them clearly described all both what was said and what was done, and the manner of it: (405) yet they did not easily give their attention to such a desperate undertaking, and did not believe it could be as they said; they also attempted to put the fire out, and quickly cutting themselves a way through it, they came within the palace, (406) and so met with the multitude of the slain, but could take no pleasure in the fact, though it were done to their enemies. Nor could they do other than wonder at the courage of their resolution and the immovable contempt of death, which so great a number of them had shown, when they went through with such an action as that was.”

Roman View of Masada

Holland Lee Hendrix of the Union Theological Seminary told PBS: “From the point of view of a Roman soldier, Masada would have been a truly awful but, at the same time, greatly relieving phenomenon. The Romans had been trying to scale Masada for a long time and had used all of their best strategies and tactics.... But the Romans, you know, also liked a good fight and the fact that that remarkable group of people who protected and fortified Masada committed suicide would probably have been seen as a source of great disappointment for the Romans. They would have wanted to punish them themselves, or at least to vanquish them themselves, but it would have been an enormous relief because Masada posed a huge strategic military challenge to the Roman legions. [Source: Holland Lee Hendrix, President of the Faculty Union Theological Seminary, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 \=/]

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Masada
“You had this extremely steep, high, plateau on which Masada was built, and the fortifications put up, and if you were a Roman soldier approaching Masada, I think your heart would sink because you know that you would have to first to spend a lot of time building a lot of ramps, massive ramps to move the army up the sides in order to breach the walls, but you would know in the process that you were on a suicide mission because, all the while the fortifiers and guardians of Masada would have been pelting you with any number of lethal objects, at no doubt great losses to the army. So if you were a Roman soldier or a Roman general you would be very concerned about the enormous toll on the attacking army. The irony, of course, is that when the soldiers breached the walls finally, it was not they who had been subject to the suicide attack, it was those who had been guarding Masada who had committed suicide. So there is a cruel irony in the whole breach of Masada.” \=/

Masada Archaeology

According to Josephus's account each male household member was in charge of killing his family. They in turn were killed by ten men who cut their throats. The 10 men then drew lots to determine who would kill whom with the final one left killing himself. When Romans arrived they found 960 corpses of men, women and children amid "a terrible solitude" and a "perfect silence." Today recruits in the Israeli army go to Masada to swear an oath: "Masada shall not fall again."

Masada was discovered in 1963 by the Israeli general Yigael Yadin and was excavated with the help of 300 soldiers in the Israeli army that moved 1.3 million cubic feet of soil and ruble in two years. Many of the discoveries they made seemed consistent with accounts by Josephus at least as they were expressed in Yigael Yadin's book Masada , including traces of a siege walls and remains from the eight Roman camps at the base of the mountain and scrolls, living quarters and Jewish coins at the top, and even remains of fires said to have been set on the day of the mass suicide.

Yadin’s team uncovered Herod's Hanging Palace and sacred scrolls, including an original Hebrew version of Ecclesiasticus, a book of moral laws originally written in the 2nd century B.C. that helped date the Dead Sea Scrolls. The archaeologists also found part of the ramp and discovered potsherds that they said had different names and were likely used to hold the lots that were cast to decided the order of the suicides.

In recent years the Yadin take on events has been challenged, particularly in the books The Masada Myth and Sacrificing Truth by Nachman Ben-Yuda. These books argue that the Masada archaeology and the interpretation of it were crafted to fit the Josephus account with the intention of inspiring soldiers in Israel at that time the excavations were done to fight with the same heroic determination.

Among other things these books point out is that no bones were found at Masada, something that seems usual for a mass suicide of 960 individuals, and the assertion that bones found far away belonged to the Masada victims even though more likely they were from Roman soldiers. On top of that the potsherds from the pots that were said to have held the suicide lots were found in a trash dump, an unlikely resting places for objects of just importance. Ben-Yadu has also pointed that the Masada residents were extremists and terrorists not heros. Regarded as Sicarii (derived form the Greek word for “dagger”), they were known to have killed Jews, marked as collaborators, as well as Romans. In one instance the massacred over 700 women and children.

Josephus Vs. Archeology on Masada

Masada earthen ramp

Eric Meyers at Duke University told PBS: “Josephus tells us that, and when they came and finally broke through with a battering ram the next day they found no one there except the silence of the place and a mass suicide. And that brings us to the question, who's right? Josephus or the archaeology...? The story that we can reconstruct from the archaeological remains is at variance from what we find in Josephus; we don't find 630 skeletons in the ruins that were excavated by archaeologists at Masada in 1963 to 1965. What we find are 25 skeletons in a big underground cave on the southern face that may or may not be refugees who escaped the mass suicide, and three other skeletons, a grown person and two children, on the site, and that's it. There is no trace whatsoever of human remains on the site. Which leads us to reflect on the meaning of this in Josephus, and the meaning that was created by the archaeological interpretation of those facts. [Source: Eric Meyers, Professor of Religion and Archaeology Duke University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 \=/]

“Clearly for Josephus, who was supported by the Roman Emperor in Rome after the war, who started out a general and wound up a pacifist, he may have used his writing of events to make an apology to his Roman patrons for those events. And he made suicide, in good Hellenistic literary style, the vehicle for this apology. On the other hand, the archaeologists who looked at the events were looking to make that story - "Masada shall not fall," [is] a phrase of modern interpretive history - to make those events, and to make this data a symbol for modern Israel and their position in the conflict of the modern Middle East. And so politics and nationalism here, I think, have influenced the way the story has been told by contemporary archaeologists. \=/

“In addition to the absence of skeletal remains, I must say that the most heinous sin for a Jew is suicide. It is one of the most unexpected things that would come from a group of pious, let alone Zealous, Jewish people in the first century. People have questioned this also as one of the major reasons for doubting the veracity and truth of the narrative of Josephus.... There is no greater crime, there is no greater sin in Judaism than suicide itself. Not only is this the ultimate insult to a loving God, but it represents also the only instance in which a Jew would be disqualified from burial in a Jewish cemetery.... \=/

“If there are no bones, and if there were no mass suicide, what happened to all of these people? In my opinion, the Roman troops probably, after they broke through with a battering ram, stormed the complex, hunted up all of these zealots, all of these poor souls, killed them and threw them over the rock, over the edge. And those bodies disarticulated naturally over the years, and their bones have been washed away, with the many floods, into the Dead Sea.” \=/

Image Sources: Wikimedia, Commons, Schnorr von Carolsfeld Bible in Bildern, 1860

Text Sources: Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); “Old Testament Life and Literature” by Gerald A. Larue, New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Wikipedia, Live Science, Archaeology magazine, National Geographic, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024