Masada, Qumran & the Dead Sea

The next morning we traveled south of Jerusalem to tour one of the most famous historic sites in Israel - Masada. An ancient mountaintop fortress, it's where the Jews made a last stand against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

There was a stark beauty to the place. Situated atop an isolated mesa, it's famous for the palaces and fortifications Judean King Herod the Great built during his reign. 

To access the site, we took a cable car ride to the top for some amazing views to the Dead Sea. After we exited and trekked up a bit, we got to explore the ruins. If you look closely at the picture below, you'll see a black line zigzagging across the wall showing what was intact below it. Everything above the black line was reconstructed.

After Herod's death, Masada was captured by Romans. The Zealots, a Jewish sect that staunchly opposed Roman domination, took it by surprise in 66 AD. The steep slopes of the mountain made Masada virtually impenetrable once the Jews occupied it. 

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple, Masada was the last remnant of Jewish rule in Palestine. Besieged by Roman legions, it took almost two years for them to gain access to the fortress. In the pics below you'll see their scheme to gain entry to Masada - siege ramps. I've drawn a black line atop the siege ramp, and circled the Roman camp that was home to the soldiers for the couple years it took to breach the walls. The second and third pics below show other Roman camps - see them?

Alas, the Zealots decided they preferred death to enslavement. When the Roman soldiers entered the fortress, they discovered that almost 1000 people had committed suicide. Masada was designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 2001. I assumed it received this distinction for Herod's construction work. However, it was actually the camps, fortifications and attack ramp that encircle the monument which are the most complete Roman siege works surviving to present day that earned Masada the designation.

Our next stop was Qumran, the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by local Bedouins. Found in caves (see below), stored in clay jars, there were a total of 972 texts. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Nabatean, it contained the oldest known existing copy of the Old Testament. 

The scrolls are believed to have belonged to the Essenes sect based upon information on the scrolls that described the inhabitants and their particular slant on Judaism. It's believed the Essenes settled here to live in isolation in a communal monastery-like setting. As we walked amongst the archaeological ruins, we saw quite a few mikvehs, which are baths used for Jewish ritual purification. 

After lunch at a resort on the Dead Sea, we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon taking a break from our busy touring schedule to just relax.

I snapped the pic above for two of the sweet ladies on our tour, Mary and her daughter Catherine. Thanks to all that salt (see some that we gathered up from the bottom as we waded in), you really do float like a cork in the Dead Sea.