Masada is another place in Israel in everyone’s hearts. The story is that the Sicarii rebels held out against the Romans for several years on Masada. The story we’ve held in our hearts is one of survival and suicide, but it seems the suicide isn’t quite as much as we’d thought. It was originally thought 960 people suicided and left only a handful of people to tell the tale but it seems that number might be slightly incorrect and there may have only been 28. Don’t know the reality but I have some photos and some impressions.

Looking at the photo above taken from the top of Masada you get some idea of how high it is as we’re looking down at the Dead Sea. It was built by King Herod between 37 and 31 BCE, he had delusions of grandeur and felt himself to be bigger than God, he built several large, expansive places over a 12 year period all at the same time. This one is an epic!

It was very hot there. Understatement. You can climb Masada by foot, it’s apparently quite possible and I saw a couple of young men getting some water having done exactly that but it was 42°C that day so I admire them for it, we took the cable car and don’t ask me about the view as I couldn’t look.

I took this in the commander’s room, you can see the view he would have had just by looking through the window, lots of visibility of the Romans below. They had several encampments below.

This is a 3D relief of Masada and it gives you some idea of the scale of the buildings compared to the top of the mountain. In other words, it covers a great deal of the top, Herod had amazing ideas as you’ll see when I cover Jerusalem and the Western Wall.

I forget what this was. It could have been a water cistern or a food storage or even something entirely different that I’ve forgotten. You can see the lining on the inside of the walls, thick as. Looking at the lining I suspect it might have been water storage.

Masada was eventually conquered by the building of an absolutely massive ramp, you can get some idea of the size looking at this photo. Only some idea, as I wasn’t quite careful enough with the photo, I was overwhelmed by the heat and the place.

This 3D relief of Masada showed the very clever way Herod built in water collection. There wasn’t a lot of water in the area and he carefully built ways of collecting and storing almost every last drop.

This pillar is currently in the middle of the synagogue. That door behind the pillar is where the rabbi works and some days it is possible to see him there transcribing Torah scrolls.

This is the first view of the Dead Sea but I’ve put it here instead of at the front because that’s the way I’m swinging today. Every time I looked at the Dead Sea I was reminded there is another country on the other side, if you look carefully at some of my Dead Sea photos you’ll actually see the mountains of Jordan.

Many of the rooms were carefully decorated inside. This was an enormous amount of work and is being carefully restored. That black line you see in the top left hand corner shows the restoration line.