Masada

The niches in the walls housed pigeons that were used as food, and whose droppings were used as fertilizer. The southern tower was also used during the Byzantine period.

 

The Byzantine church  –

The center of the Byzantine monastery was the church, which is well preserved. Pass through the narthex, with its white mosaic, and continue to the nave. The floor here was originally paved with mosaic and its walls were decorated with a design created from pottery sherds inserted in plaster. The room’s semicircular apse is preserved to its original height; glass from its window was found in the church courtyard. The floor contains a pit, which may have served as a crypt or a reliquary. It was dug in the ground beneath the altar, which was originally sectioned off by a decorated marble chancel. The church was roofed with clay tiles, which were found by the dozens during excavation. Plastered stone gutters protruded from the roof of the church and were attached to its outer walls. The western room of the church contains a mosaic depicting floral designs and medallions encircling fruit and baskets of communion bread. A low stone wall surrounded the church courtyard, where a number of farming installations were discovered.

 

 

The Large Bathhouse

Bathhouses were an integral part of Roman culture. Enter Masada’s Roman-style bathhouse via the courtyard, which was surrounded by columns. A model of the bathhouse located in the courtyard shows its original appearance and use. Enter the dressing room (apoditerium), with its unique paved floor and fresco-adorned walls. During the revolt, benches made out of column drums were installed in this room, along with an immersion pool.

Moving into the tepid room (tepidarium) you will see remarkably preserved frescoes. On the right is the cold room (fridgedarium), a stepped pool. Continue through the original arched entrance to the hot room (caldarium). This room had a double floor, known as a hypocaust. The upper floor stood on brick and stone columns. Hot air flowed under the floor  and rose through clay pipes embedded in the walls. In one corner of the room, a portion of the floor and wall has been restored. Nearby was a bath to which hot water was channeled. The room was originally decorated with frescoes and stucco reliefs and had a wide vaulted ceiling.

Leaving the hot room through an opening in the wall created for visitors, you will pass the bathhouse furnace. Continue right, through the corridor of the storerooms toward the place where the "lots" were found.

 

The storerooms complex

This concentration of 29 long rooms surrounded by corridors was built by Herod to hold food, liquids, and weapons. As Josephus describes them: "For here had been stored a mass of corn, amply sufficient to last for years, abundance of wine and oil, besides every variety of pulse and piles of dates." (Josephus Flavius, The Wars of the Jews, VII, 296)

Three pits, discovered in one of the storerooms’ plastered floors, attest to the storage of liquids. Josephus states that when the rebels took the fortress, they found well-preserved food supplies, which he attributed to the arid conditions, "although from the date of storage to the capture of the place by the Romans well-nigh a century had elapsed." (Josephus Flavius, The Wars of the Jews, VII, 297)

Herod’s discerning taste was evident in the contents of the storerooms, which included a large number of storage vessels, unique in its quantity, bearing ink inscriptions. Among the inscriptions are those noting a shipment of amphorae to Herod, King of Judea in 19 BCE from southern Italy by a supplier named Lucius Lanius. According to Josephus, Herod had a special wine servant, and among the delicacies served at Masada was a fish sauce known as garum, from southern Spain. Fish bones from this sauce were found in the remains of one vessel.

 



The Northern Palace –

This grand and daring building constructed by Herod is Masada’s architectural gem. It is 30 meters high, built on three rock terraces and supported by impressive retaining walls. Combining both Hellenistic and Roman architectural elements, the palace was built to host high-ranking visitors and to allow the king his solitude. Herod and his familylived on the upper level, and the two lower levels were for receptions.

 

You can see the beginning of the original flight of steps connecting the upper terrace of the palace to the middle terrace. In the center of the middle level of the palace was a circular hall for banquets and receptions, surrounded by columns of which only the foundations remain.

 

The breaching point  –

Above the Roman siege ramp the perimeter wall is missing where it was destroyed during the assault. In the Hebrew month of Nissan, in the spring of 73 or 74 CE, the Romans raised a tower high enough to overlook the wall and bombarded the area, as attested to by the ballista balls and arrowheads discovered in the excavation. The rebels defended themselves by rolling down large stones on the Romans. After the Romans destroyed the perimeter wall, they burned the wood-and-earth wall the rebels had built to shore it up. Thus, the siege came to an end. From the restored tower you can see the siege wall and the Roman camps at the base of Masada, among them camp F, the camp of the siege's commander.

The synagogue  -

This building, constructed in Herod’s time, was apparently first used as a stable. It was converted into a synagogue at the time of the Great Revolt, when rows of benches lining the hall and a separate room at the back were added. Two pits dug in the floor of the back room were found to contain biblical scrolls, indicating it may have served as a geniza, a storage room for sacred scrolls. Among the scroll fragments discovered was Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones. On the floor of the room an inscription was found that read "the priest’s tithe". This is one of the only synagogues dating from the time of the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE.