Hollywood could not have scripted it better: A band of 967 Jewish rebels retreats to a desert mountaintop fortress following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. Two years later the Roman army sets out to quell this last vestige of the Great Jewish Revolt. Finally, in a massive construction effort, the Romans build a large assault ramp, wheel a battering ram to the top of the mount and destroy the fortress’s defenses.
But when the Roman soldiers burst through, they were met neither by fierce resistance nor by meek surrender—they were met by silence. On the previous night, the leader of the rebels, Eleazar Ben Yair, had gathered his followers and made a passionate plea that they not allow themselves to become enslaved. Heeding Ben Yair’s call, the rebels cast lots and chose ten men to kill all the others; these ten then cast lots to pick one who would kill the other nine and then kill 025himself. The Romans captured the fortress, but they captured none of the rebels alive. The only survivors were two women and five children who hid themselves to escape the collective suicide and later related the events to the conquerors.
This is the stirring story of Masada. For nearly 2,000 years, we have known this tale of bravery and defiance from the writings of Josephus Flavius, the first-century A.D. Jewish historian who himself led a rebel force during the Great Jewish Revolt but who was captured and later moved to Rome and composed a history of the war.
In the 1960s, Yigael Yadin’s excavations brought the defense and fall of Masada vividly to life. Masada had originally served as one of a string of desert palace-fortresses for Herod the Great, the first-century B.C. king of Judea who ruled with Rome’s approval. Yadin uncovered Herod’s two palaces, decorated with beautiful wall frescoes and floor mosaics. He unearthed the Herodian bathhouse, a large complex of storerooms and the defense wall that encircled the fortress. The site also yielded artifacts from the rebel occupation of the fortress and several skeletons (which Yadin identified as the remains of rebels), as well as small pottery pieces inscribed with names, which he believed had been the lots the defenders had drawn to select who would kill the others. Masada became a powerful symbol for the then-young State of Israel. At swearing-in ceremonies atop the mountain, new recruits to the army swore, “Masada shall not fall again!”
In recent years, questions have been raised about the reliability of Josephus’s account. Some historians, for example, doubt whether the defenders committed mass suicide; others have suggested that the skeletons found by Yadin were not those of Jewish defenders but of later Roman soldiers.a
Another aspect of the Masada story that has to be carefully reexamined is the prevailing myth about the size of the Roman assault ramp.
The Masada fortress sits atop a lofty mesa, an isolated hill with steeply sloping sides and a level top. Save for one spot, Masada is separated from its surrounding terrain by precipitous cliffs that are 300 to 1,000 feet high. According to Josephus the Romans were able to breach the defenses of Masada by building a gigantic ramp on the west side of the mountain.
The west side of Masada is the only relatively convenient way to reach the top of the mountain. There, a moderately sloping (about 20 degrees) narrow spur descends from 40 feet below the top to the western approaches to Masada, which lie 300 feet below the top of the mount. This western spur is 740 feet long at its base, 650 feet wide at its widest along the side of Masada and 80 feet wide at its narrowest in the west. By a rough and conservative estimate, the volume of rock and earth within the spur is about 8.8 million cubic feet.
From Josephus’s somewhat literary, rather than strictly technical, account of the building of the ramp (see the sidebar “Josephus Describes the Building of the Ramp”) one might conclude that the western spur, in its entirety, is the man-made ramp built by the Romans. Indeed, many authors accepted Josephus’s account of the ramp at face value and spread the view that the entire western spur is the Roman earthwork.1 The ramp at Masada is often hailed as the largest assault ramp ever built by the Roman army and is considered a phenomenal feat of military engineering.
Constructing such a huge earthwork would have required a labor force of thousands of workers and many months of work. In line with this “huge-ramp scenario,” one finds in histories of Masada the widely perpetuated myth that the siege began after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and lasted three years.2 To support this scenario, many authors also inflate the number of Roman Legionnaires and Jewish slave workers who took part in the siege.3
026
The building of the ramp was undoubtedly a demanding project, but it was not nearly as demanding as has often been assumed. My study of the geology of the spur and the nearby area shows that the ramp is a layer of man-made earthwork, several feet thick, that was added on top of what is a large natural spur.4 This finding is important to understanding the story of Masada because it shows that the building of the ramp could have been completed in a few weeks rather than many months.
How can we tell that the spur is for the most part a natural topographic feature? To answer that question, one has to be familiar with Masada’s geological setting. Masada is located on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert. This region sits on the western elevated margins 027of the Dead Sea Rift, which is a segment of the great Syrian-African fault. This shear zone starts in northern Syria, passes through the Bek’aa Valley in Lebanon, goes down through the Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea, passes through the Aravah Valley to the Gulf of Elat/Aqaba, and continues southward into the Red Sea and down to eastern Africa. This fault separates the Arabian plate, in the east, from the Levant-Sinai sub-plate of Africa, in the west.
The elevated margins of the Dead Sea Rift, and the Masada area in particular, are cut by many fault lines, most of them running north to south. A geological fault is a fracture in the Earth’s uppermost crust along which blocks of terrain have shifted relative to each other. The movement, or displacement, of the blocks can be either horizontal (where the two blocks remain on the same plane, but move sideways past each other along the fault) or, as is the case with Masada, vertical (where one block moves down relative to another). Geologists call the block that has moved up the uplifted block (or footwall) and the block that has moved down the downfaulted block (or hanging wall). The amount of vertical displacement is called the throw of the fault. A downfaulted block flanked by uplifted blocks is called a graben; an uplifted block flanked by downfaulted blocks is called a horst.
Masada is a horst. It is the northern edge of a 1,600-to-3,000-foot-wide horst that extends in a north-south direction for some 6 miles to the south of Masada. Masada was isolated from the southern part of this horst by the intensive down-cutting caused by water flowing through Nahal Masada. (Nahal is the Hebrew word for wadi, the Arabic name for a desert riverbed that is usually dry but is prone to flash floods, which are responsible for a great deal of erosion.)
The Masada horst is bounded by faults on the east and west. The East Masada Fault is the most western of the faults that delimit the western margins of the Dead Sea Rift. These faults run all along the west side of the Dead Sea and beyond and are responsible for the spectacular 650-to-1,000-foot-high cliffs that bound the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea all the way from north of Jericho to south of Sodom.
The West Masada Fault, which will be our focus here, separates the Masada horst from the graben to the west. The difference in height between the uplifted horst and the downfaulted graben—the throw of the fault—is about 360 feet.
The terrain in the Masada area is made up of three bedrock formations. From older to younger and from bottom to top, these formations are called, in Israeli geological terminology, the Bina,5 Menuha and Mishash formations.
The Bina Formation, about 500 feet thick, consists of thick, massive brown-colored layers of very hard limestones and dolomites, dating to the Turonian stage (93 to 89 million years ago).
The Menuha Formation, dating to the early Santonian stage (86 to 83 million years ago), consists mostly of white chalk. It is about 150 feet thick and can be subdivided into three sections: a lower (M1) and an upper (M3) layer of massive chalk, and a middle section (M2) of distinct thin layers (each only 12 to 20 inches thick) of hard chalk. The middle section of the Menuha Formation (M2) can be readily recognized in the landscape and provides an important stratigraphic marker that helps to unravel the geology around Masada.
The Mishash Formation, about 165 feet thick and dating to the Campanian stage (83 to 71 million years ago), consists of alternating thin layers of dark gray chert (flint), soft chalk and soft marl.
A trained geologist will have no trouble distinguishing the Bina, Menuha and Mishash formations from one another, thanks to their different rock types, colors and susceptibility to erosion, which give each formation a unique fingerprint in the landscape. The massive layers of hard 028dolomites and limestones of the Bina Formation are much more resistant to erosion than the softer chalks and thin chert beds of the Menuha and Mishash formations.
The key feature of Masada’s western spur is that most of it is composed not of a jumble of rock and loose earth, as you would expect of a man-made fill, but of nicely layered local bedrock: a layer of the Menuha Formation topped by the Mishash Formation. What is notable about the spur is that these Menuha and Mishash layers are directly next to a block of Bina Formation hard rock—the Masada horst itself. Clearly, the rock units have shifted to their present position as a result of the displacement of blocks of terrain along the West Masada Fault: Masada is the uplifted footwall and the spur is part of the downfaulted hanging wall of the fault.
The spur today is covered by a talus (rock debris) and by the Roman earthwork that formed the assault ramp. There are, however, several spots where the natural bedrock layers of the spur can be inspected.
The best outcrop is found along the upper part of Nahal Nimmer,6 where the spur’s northern flank abuts Masada’s western side. Facing the top section of Nahal Nimmer, the steep cliff edge to the left—the western side of Masada—is the plane of the West Masada Fault and consists of Bina Formation hard rock. The spur is to the right and the sloping line at the top is the crest line of the Roman assault ramp. It is important to note that the bulk of the spur, up to about 16 feet below its top, consists of natural bedrock. This is one of the few spots where the contact between the bedrock and the man-made earthwork can be seen. Note that Nahal Nimmer begins at this contact, rather than at the very top of the ramp.
Another outcrop is the white elevated bank at the lower, western, end of the spur (labeled “White Bank” in the drawing on p. 26). It consists of the relatively hard white chalk layers in the middle part of the Menuha Formation (M2). The continuation of these beds as they slope eastward toward Masada is clearly visible on both the northern and especially the southern flanks of the spur. This bank is the spot that most scholars identify, in my opinion erroneously, as the site referred to by Josephus as the “Leuce,” which means white in Greek. As I will discuss later, it is more likely that this name designated the entire spur.
Between these two outcrops, the natural bedrock of the spur is concealed by a covering of rocks that had formed the Roman earthwork. This covering consists of small, square and rectangular blocks (about one foot long) of white chalk from the prevalent Menuha Formation layer and brown chalk, also of the Menuha Formation, that were quarried from an area west of the spur. The talus also includes angular cobbles and rock debris of two kinds: brown dolomite, from the cliffs of the Bina Formation that tower over the spur, and dark brown to gray chert from the Mishash Formation, which forms the bedrock underneath the upper part of the spur.
As we noted above, the relatively soft Menuha and Mishash formations erode more readily than do the hard and massive rocks of the Bina Formation. Over a very long period, the streams in the Masada area have been carving out their courses at the expense of the Mishash and Menuha formations, while the rocks of the Bina Formation in the Masada horst have remained more or less intact. This process formed the dramatic high cliffs around the Masada horst.
The drainage system and the shape of the landscape of the Judean Desert have evolved over the last five 029million years in response to the rapid sinking of the Dead Sea graben, the level that local streams must reach. The principal phase of this process began only about two million years ago. Thus, geologically speaking, the local erosion cycle is still young and has not had enough time to erode all of the Menuha and Mishash material in the graben immediately west of Masada. Eventually (in several hundred thousand years, give or take) all of the remnants of the Menuha and Mishash formations, including the western spur, will be cleared away. Thus, the spur along the western side of Masada is simply a part of this not-yet-eroded rock mass.
If the spur is a natural formation, how do we know that the Romans augmented it at all?
The spur forms the water divide between the ephemeral streams of Nahal Nimmer, to the north, and Nahal Masada, to the south. Nahal Nimmer begins as a very narrow and deep gully about 16 feet below the crest of the spur. That it does not begin at the top of the spur is unusual. It indicates that the water divide—the spur—was raised at least 16 feet after Nahal Nimmer was formed. Moreover, the crest of the spur has a peculiar shape. Rather than having a smoothly rounded-off profile, which is what we would expect as a result of prolonged erosion, it is a pointed triangular prism that was superimposed on top of the spur. This prism-shaped artificial addition does not consist of solid bedrock but of loose pulverized chalk and small, square and rectangular blocks of white and brown chalk, identical to the ones we find in the talus that covers the sides of the spur.
Moreover, at several places along the ramp, there are short (mostly 2-to-3-foot-long) pieces of timber and tree branches embedded in the soil. These had been noted by earlier investigators; Adolf Lammerer, who surveyed the ramp for an expedition led by Adolf Schulten in 1932, suggested that they were part of a framework constructed by the Romans to support the loose earth used for building the ramp.7 More recently, Ha’im Goldfus of Ben-Gurion University conducted a trial excavation in the ramp. He dug a shallow ditch in a 320-square-foot area on the southern flank of the ramp and exposed many tree branches embedded in the soft soil. Most of the wood is of tamarisk trees, which grow in the area.8 The wood was dated by the carbon 14 method and yielded a date of 119 A.D., plus or minus 47 years.9 The date of the construction of the ramp, 73 (or 74, according to some scholars) A.D., falls at the far end of this range.
So we know the spur is a natural formation and the Romans augmented it to build their ramp. The next question, naturally, is how much material did the Romans add to the spur? Our answer will tell us how much human effort and how much time was required to build the ramp.
Although there is no certain answer, we can make a reasonably accurate estimate. To be exact, we would need to know the precise configuration and level of the natural bedrock along the surface of the spur and the exact layout of the Roman ramp. The surface of the natural spur is no longer exposed. How far it lies below the present surface can, however, be inferred by making shallow borings or by digging shallow trenches (a shallow geophysical survey would be best, but none has been carried out yet). As for the Roman ramp, most of it, particularly along its sides, has eroded over the last 1,900 years and we can make only a rough guess of how it may have looked.
We cannot use Josephus’s description to reconstruct the layout and dimensions of the ramp. First, the heights given by him for the ramp (200 cubits, or 300 feet), the stone platform at the top of the ramp (50 cubits, or 75 feet) and the siege tower (60 cubits, or 90 feet) are wrong. Josephus’s figures add up to 310 cubits (465 feet), while the actual difference in height between the top of Masada’s defensive wall and the base of the spur is only 030315 feet. Also, at the top of the spur there is not enough room for a 75-foot-wide platform, as Josephus claims, and no remains of large masonry blocks, of which the platform was allegedly built, can be found nearby. It is more reasonable to assume, as already suggested by Lammerer, that the installations on the spur included only a ramp and a tower, without a stone platform.
The dimensions of the ramp and the height of the tower were interdependent. A lower ramp meant a higher tower. The Romans, naturally, would have chosen the dimensions that required the least effort. With this premise and the actual topography in mind, we can propose probable dimensions for the ramp and tower.
The height of the tower was determined by the elevation at which the eastern end of the ramp met the western face of Masada. Today the end of the spur meets Masada 43 feet below the mountain’s top. Due to erosion, the ramp is lower today than it was at the time of the siege, but probably by no more than 3 feet. Because the Roman tower had to be at least ten feet higher than Masada’s defensive wall to be effective, I estimate that the tower was 70 feet high: 40 feet to reach from the top of the ramp to the top of Masada, 20 feet to reach the top of the wall and another 10 feet to operate above the wall. Such a tall tower was probably some 25 to 30 feet wide at its base. I assume that to move such a wide tower up the ramp, the ramp had to be about 50 feet wide. (We should note that the total volume of the ramp is dependent on how wide the ramp was, yet the width is the one dimension we are least sure of.)
I estimate that today the average thickness of the extant ramp along the crest of the spur is about 16 feet. To build a level ramp, the thickness of the ramp at its flanks had to be greater than along its crest. Since the flanks of the spur slope at a 30 degree angle, at the edges of the ramp, 25 feet away from the middle, the fill had to be 30 feet deep (the formula is: 25 multiplied by the tangent of 30 [0.577], which equals 14.4; add that to 16 and you get about 30). According to this scheme, the average thickness of the fill across the width of the ramp would have been 23 feet (16 feet at the crest plus 30 feet at the edges, divided by 2). To this we have to add the 3 feet that were presumably eroded away, giving us an average thickness of 26 feet.
The length of the artificial earthwork today is 510 feet. This is very likely the length of the original ramp because it leads from the western approaches to the top of Masada; there is no reason for it to be any longer. We now have estimates for all three dimensions: 50 feet wide, 26 feet deep and 510 feet long, giving us a total volume for the manmade ramp of 663,000 cubic feet. In view of the uncertainty about the width of the ramp, any estimate in the range of 500,000 to 1.4 million cubic feet is reasonable.
I want to emphasize that these estimates are based on the assumption that the tower and the battering ram were assembled at the base of the spur and were 031wheeled up the ramp in one piece. It is possible, however, that these war machines were carried up the ramp in parts and assembled somewhere higher on the slope, or perhaps even at its top. If that were the case, the ramp could have been much narrower for most of its length and the volume of earth needed for its construction would have been considerably smaller.
Based on various sources regarding the logistics of Roman siege-work building, Jonathan Roth of San Jose State University estimated the construction rate for the various siege installations at Masada.10 For the ramp he assumed a construction rate of 35 cubic feet per laborer per day. Roth further assumed that the project was carried out by three shifts of 800 workers each, who worked around the clock (the narrow spur could not accommodate more men than that). According to these estimates, the construction rate of the ramp would have been about 84,000 cubic feet per day. At that rate, a 663,000-cubic-feet ramp could have been built in just eight days. Such a short time span may well be overly optimistic. However, even if we cut the construction rate in half and assume a volume of 1.4 million cubic feet, the ramp could have been built in about one month.
According to Roth, the rest of the siege works (including the building of roads, the 2.25-mile-long siege wall that encircled Masada and the eight army camps) could have been completed in just 31 days. Even if we double this to two months, all the siege installations around Masada could have been constructed in about three months—one month for the ramp and two months for everything else.
Such a duration is in agreement with often-overlooked passages in Josephus that, taken together, indicate the siege lasted only a matter of months. Josephus does not provide the dates of the beginning or end of the siege, nor its duration. He does state that the mass suicide occurred on the 15th of the spring month of Xanthicus, but he does not provide the year. Adolf Schulten, who 056explored Masada in 1932, thoroughly analyzed Josephus’s narrative and Roman military histories and concluded that the siege began in the late fall or winter of 72 A.D. and ended on the 16th of April 73 A.D.11 Thus the siege was only about four to seven months long. Ironically, these passages have been missed by historians who assumed the building of just the ramp alone must have taken years.
Why is the conventional wisdom so wrong? How did historians come to believe that the entire spur was built by the Romans? The problems stem from misunderstanding Josephus’s admittedly rather awkward description of the construction of the ramp.
Describing the building of the assault ramp, Josephus writes, “He [the Roman general Silva] had discovered only one spot capable of supporting earthwork. For in rear of the tower [built by Herod to guard Masada’s western approach] … was a projection of rock, of considerable breadth and jutting far out, but still 300 cubits (450 feet) below the elevation of Masada; it was called Leuce [white]. Silva, having accordingly ascended and occupied this eminence, ordered his troops to throw up an embankment. Working with a will and a multitude of hands, they raised a solid bank to a height of 200 cubits [300 feet].”12
Josephus’s claim that the Leuce is 300 cubits (450 feet) below the summit has misled many into believing that he was referring to the small white bank that protrudes at the far western end of the spur. This bank occupies an area of only 82 by 82 feet, is only some 23 feet above the surrounding terrain and is of little importance. It does not even merit a name. Gaining control over it would give a besieger no military advantage over the fortress, and it certainly was not capable of supporting an earthwork.
But just the opposite is true of the spur itself: It is an unusual and prominent white-colored landmark in the landscape, so it merits a name. Gaining control over it would be crucial in attacking the fortress at Masada and it could certainly have furnished a solid foundation for an assault ramp. These facts strongly suggest that the name Leuce refers to the entire spur. But what about Josephus’s statement that the Leuce was 300 cubits below the summit of Masada? Undoubtedly he simply meant that the spur at its lowest point was 300 cubits below the summit.
Another pitfall in Josephus’s description is his statement that Silva “raised a solid bank to the height of 200 cubits [300 feet].” Taken at face value, this statement can indeed be understood to mean that the entire spur was man-made. However, to anyone who is familiar with the geology around Masada, it is clear that Josephus here intended to describe the combined height of the natural spur and the Roman assault ramp, not just the man-made addition.
Josephus’s mostly accurate descriptions of the topography and especially of the palaces and buildings on Masada, which were confirmed by archaeological excavations, were apparently based on a firsthand familiarity with the site. In his autobiography, Josephus writes that when he was 16, he spent three years with the Essene sect “in the wilderness.”13 The Essenes’ center was at Qumran, about 30 miles north of Masada, and they occupied several other remote sites in the Judean Desert. During his sojourn with the Essenes, Josephus would have had many opportunities to view Masada from a distance. During those years (50 to 53 A.D.), however, a Roman garrison occupied Masada, and it is not likely that Josephus could have visited the fortress itself.
Regarding the siege and the fall of Masada, Josephus would not have had to rely solely on his own knowledge. Josephus was the commander of the Revolt in the Galilee. He surrendered to the Romans after the fall of Yodfat (Jotapata). Immediately after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., which for all practical purposes put an end to the Jewish Revolt, Josephus emigrated to Rome, became a Roman citizen and enjoyed the patronage of the emperor, Vespasian, and of Titus, Vespasian’s son and chief army commander. This gave Josephus access to Roman military reports about the war, and, in his book, The Jewish War, he drew on them for his description of the revolt and of the battle of Masada.14
The confusion over the size of the assault ramp can be attributed to Josephus’s careless choice of words in his description of the western spur and of the construction of the ramp, and to many scholars’ lack of firsthand knowledge of the terrain around Masada. A study of the geology of the area clarifies the matter: It reveals that most of the spur is a natural topographic feature and that the Roman ramp was only about 26 feet thick. The rebels at Masada were able to live free from Roman rule for about three years after the fall of Jerusalem, but once the Romans began their siege, the rebels’ fate was sealed. When the end came, it came swiftly.
Hollywood could not have scripted it better: A band of 967 Jewish rebels retreats to a desert mountaintop fortress following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. Two years later the Roman army sets out to quell this last vestige of the Great Jewish Revolt. Finally, in a massive construction effort, the Romans build a large assault ramp, wheel a battering ram to the top of the mount and destroy the fortress’s defenses. But when the Roman soldiers burst through, they were met neither by fierce resistance nor by meek surrender—they were met by silence. On […]
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The idea that the entire spur was built by the Romans is either explicitly stated or implied in numerous publications. See, for example, Christopher Hawkes, “The Roman siege of Masada,” Antiquity 3 (1929), pp. 195–213; Michael Avi-Yonah, Nachman Avigad, Yochanan Aharoni, Imanuel Dunayevsky and Shmaria Gutman, “The archaeological survey of Masada, 1955–1956,” Israel Exploration Journal 7:1 (1957), pp. 1–60, esp. p. 7; Yigael Yadin, Masada, Herod’s fortress and the Zealots’ last stand (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. 226; Avi-Yonah, Carta’s atlas of the period of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and the Talmud, 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Carta, 1974; in Hebrew); Y.L. Levin, The History of Eretz Ysrael, vol. 4, The Roman and Byzantine Period (Jerusalem: Ketter and Yad Ben-Zvi, 1984; in Hebrew); Israel Shatzman, “The Roman Siege of Masada,” in Gila Hurvitz, ed., The Story of Masada: Discoveries From the Excavations (Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, 1997), pp. 109–130. It is particularly significant that this understanding is evidently still prevalent among archaeologists such as Meir Ben-Dov and Ehud Netzer. See Ben-Dov, “In contradiction to the claim made by geologist Dan Gill, archaeologists claim the Masada siege ramp is man-made,” Ha’aretz (August 13, 1993), p. 6 (in Hebrew); and Netzer, “Masada ramp thesis is as firm as bedrock,” Jerusalem Post (December 7, 1994), p. 7.
2.
Nachman Ben-Yehuda cites 14 history books and 16 guidebooks in which this statement is made (Ben-Yehuda, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel [Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1995], tables 8.1, 9.1).
3.
Sources that advocate that the besieging forces numbered 16,000 to 25,000 men (6,000 to 10,000 legionnaires and 10,000 to 15,000 slave workers) include Moshe Pearlman, The Zealots of Masada (Herzlia: Palphot; repr. London: Hamilton, 1969; New York: Scribner, 1967), p. 13; and Louis H. Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1937–1980) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984), p. 776.
4.
Dan Gill, “A Natural Spur at Masada,” Nature 364 (1993), pp. 569–570. I should note that my conclusions confirmed and refined the findings of the earlier investigation by Adolf Lammerer, the German general who surveyed the ramp for Adolf Schulten’s expedition in 1932 (Lammerer, “Der Angriffsdamm,” in Schulten, “Masada: Die Burg des Herodes und romoschen Lager,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palastina-Vereins 56 [1933], pp. 167–171); Lammerer and Schulten’s observations were highlighted by Yoseph Braslavi (Braslavi, Masada [Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hame’ukhad, 1944; in Hebrew]); see also Braslavi, “The Dead Sea around and around,” in Did you know the land? (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hame’uchad, 1955; in Hebrew), pp. 297–448. A correct geological analysis of the spur was published by Shmaria Gutman in With Masada: Excursion and research notes (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hame’uchad, 1965; in Hebrew). Gutman’s findings, which were published earlier in several articles in the journal Mibefnim, were also adopted by Ian Archibald Richmond (Richmond, “The Roman siege-works at Masada, Israel,” Journal of Roman Studies 52 [1962], pp. 142–155). I arrived at my findings independently of these earlier studies, and became familiar with them only after I completed my own investigation.
5.
The Bina Formation is a geological rock unit name that is used in central and northern Israel. In the Judean Desert the Bina Formation is subdivided into the Derorim, Shivta and Nezer formations. I chose to combine these units and employ the name Bina in order to simplify the drawings and the discussion.
6.
The word Nimmer means tiger in Arabic. This stream is also known as Wadi Kibrita (sulfur in Arabic), and Nahal, or Gay, Ha’armon, the Palace Stream, or Gully, in Hebrew.
7.
Lammerer, “Der Angriffsdamm,” p. 169.
8.
Nili Liphschitz, Simcha Lev-Yadun and Yoav Waisel, “Dendroarchaeological Investigations in Israel (Masada),” Israel Exploration Journal 31 (1981), pp. 230–234. The authors analyzed 186 branches from the ramp and report that 92 percent are of Tamarix jordanis trees and the remaining 8 percent are of a few other species that still grow in the area.
9.
Dan Yakir, Arie Issar, Yoel Gat, Eilon Adar, Peter Trimborn and Joseph Lipp, “13C and 18O of wood from the Roman siege rampart in Masada, Israel (A.D. 70–73): Evidence for a less arid climate for the region,” Geochemica et Cosmochemica Acta 58:16 (1994), pp. 3,535–3,539.
10.
Jonathan Roth, “The length of the siege of Masada,” Scripta Classica Israelica 14 (1995), pp. 87–110.
11.
Schulten, Masada, pp. 17–18. Most scholars concur with these dates, but some push the events forward to 73–74 A.D. See Hannah M. Cotton, “The Date of the Fall of Masada—The Evidence of the Masada Papyri,” Zeitschrift für papyrologie und epigraphik 78 (1989), pp. 157–162; see also Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship, p. 789.
12.
Henry St. John Thackeray, Josephus with an English translation, v. 3, The Jewish War, Books IV–VII (London: W. Heinemann, 1928), 7.8.5, p. 591.
13.
Tessa Rajak, Josephus: The historian and his society (London: Duckworth, 1983), p. 34.
14.
This has opened Josephus up to criticism. Several historians over the years have suggested that Josephus’s description of the battle of Masada may have been deliberately slanted to make Flavius Silva, the commander of the 10th Roman Legion, look good and that Josephus inflated the Roman accomplishment to please his patrons. Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship, pp. 772–777.
