Machaerus: Where Salome Danced and John the Baptist Was Beheaded

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Salome danced at Machaerus. And John the Baptist was beheaded there. The gospel story is supplemented by the Jewish historian Josephus: It all began when Herod Antipas (King Herod the Great’s son who ruled Galilee and Perea between 4 B.C. and 39 A.D.; see the following article) lusted after his brother’s wife Herodias. Herod Antipas persuaded Herodias to divorce her husband and marry him. This union was denounced as unlawful by John the Baptist,¹ which naturally made Herodias furious with him. During her first marriage, Herodias had born a daughter named Salome, who danced for her new step-father, Herod Antipas, at his famous 031 032 birthday party at Machaerus. Herod Antipas was so pleased with her dance that he “promised an oath to grant her whatever she might ask” (Matthew 14:7 [see sidebar]; see also Mark 6:23). “Prompted by her mother,” Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. “Out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he commanded it to be given; he sent and had John beheaded in the prison” (Matthew 14:8–10; see also Mark 6:24–28). According to Josephus, the Baptist was brought to Machaerus in chains and put to death.²

I think we can identify the very location of the party where Salome danced. But that is getting ahead of the story.

Machaerus is one of the fortified royal palaces most often associated with Herod the Great, 033 although they are actually of Hasmonean origin (except for Herodium, which was built and named by Herod). There were at least seven of these fortresses, from Alexandrium (also known as Alexandreion or Sartaba) in the north to Masada in the south. In between, from north to south, were Doq, Cypros, Hyrcania, Herodium (Herodion) and Machaerus. Excluding Machaerus, which sits on the eastern edge of the Dead Sea, all of these sites are located west of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Those west of the Jordan form a kind of wall protecting Jerusalem. All, including Jerusalem, are visible from Machaerus’s high perch over the Dead Sea. Machaerus was thus the first to face an enemy from the east and could warn the others of the danger. According to Pliny the Elder, Machaerus was the strongest citadel in Judea after Jerusalem.³

Herod the Great was a notoriously unpopular ruler, and some think that these palace/fortresses were built to provide Herod with a safe haven in case of rebellion. To assure that he would be mourned, he ordered that “all the principal men of the entire Jewish nation, wheresoever they lived,” should be killed on Herod’s death.⁴ But there was another, outside danger: The Jewish area of Perea, ruled by Herod Antipas after his father’s death, lay east of the Jordan at the border of Nabatea, a potential foe. Were the Nabateans to attack, Machaerus would be the first to face the enemy.

If, however, an attack from the north or the 034 035 south reached Alexandrium or Masada first, Machaerus would receive a signal by smoke during the day or fire by night. The eastern fortress would then send out flares of its own, visible to all of the other western citadels. Even Jerusalem was visible from Machaerus. The smoke of the sacrificial offerings could be seen rising from the altars of the Jerusalem Temple.⁵

The fortress of Machaerus was thus critical to the defense of Judea.

Although Josephus described Machaerus in some detail, its location was forgotten even in ancient times. There is no record of pilgrims going to the site when Constantine made Christianity a licit religion in the fourth century. German explorer Ulrich Seetzen rediscovered the citadel at Machaerus only in 1807, and its lower city was first identified by the French Dominican Father Felix-Marie Abel of the École Biblique in 1909.

In 1968 an exploratory trial excavation was conducted by Jerry Vardaman, who later founded the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University. It lasted for less than a month. The Jordanian authorities canceled the excavation permit, probably because Vardaman’s report, written just a year after the Six-Day War in June 1967, described Machaerus as an important site in Judea in Hasmonean (c. 140–37 B.C.) and Herodian times (37 B.C.–44 A.D.).

The most important excavations at Machaerus in the 20th century were conducted by two well-known scholars from the Studium Biblicum 036 037 Franciscanum in Jerusalem, Virgilio Corbo and Michele Piccirillo, in 1978–1981 and by Piccirillo again in 1992–1993. Although they published several excellent preliminary articles, both scholars passed away before a final report was ever written. Piccirillo did publish the numismatic finds, and Corbo’s colleague Stanislao Loffreda published the ceramic finds. Father Corbo concentrated primarily on the architecture of the citadel—his sketched layout was the first publication of the ground plan of the interior of the fortified palace.

In 2009, following the untimely death of Father Piccirillo, our team from the Hungarian Academy of Arts, in collaboration with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, resumed excavations exactly where the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum had left off. A significant result of our excavations was the discovery of the extraordinary depths of the citadel. For example, the interior of the western bastion, previously believed to have walls less than 5 feet tall, included intact walls that were 30 feet high. In another case, we discovered and fully excavated the 50-foot-deep Hasmonean cistern of the citadel, which continued to be used in the Herodian period.

In addition, we used state-of-the-art instruments that included ground-penetrating radar and eddy current detectors with variable antennas. Among 038 the antennas used in the radar surveys, the 400 Mhz GPR antenna (launching 60 electromagnetic pulses per second) can reveal structures more than 12 feet below the surface under dry soil conditions, and the 40 Mhz GPR antenna reveals soil and rock structures up to a depth of 130 feet. The antennas of the eddy current detector operate using different signal strengths and are primarily used for the upper strata of the archaeological layers, down to a depth of 3 feet.

Among our most pleasant tasks were several archaeological and architectural surveys of comparative Hasmonean and Herodian palace/fortresses in 039 Israel. Much of our understanding of Machaerus is based on comparanda from these sites. Not surprisingly, much of the Herodian-period decoration at Machaerus is similar to what we had seen at these other sites, which in turn echo contemporaneous Roman style. The architectural decoration of the buildings in Rome were made of marble; in Herodium it was carved limestone; in Machaerus it was plaster. But the style is the same. Often only small chips survived at Machaerus. Like the architecture, the mosaics at Machaerus are reminiscent of the other fortresses. The floor mosaics in the Western Palace of Masada and in the Machaerus apoditerium (the entrance area to the bath) feature matching designs that were plainly made at the same workshop. There are numerous examples of architectural and construction parallels among all the palace/fortresses.

Based on the extensive data from our surveys, instrumental examinations, comparisons with sites west of the Jordan, and excavations (both previous and our own), we can confidently report that Machaerus was inhabited in three periods: (1) during the time of Alexander Jannaeus (in the Hasmonean period c. 90 B.C.), (2) after being remodeled by Herod the Great (c. 20 B.C.), and (3) by Jewish rebels known as Zealots during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–72 A.D.).

In both the original construction by Alexander Jannaeus and after Herod the Great’s renovations, bastions with towers protected the citadel on three sides. The lower city provided the needed protection for the north side of the citadel.

Herod’s palace also included a courtyard with a small royal garden, a Roman-style bath, a triclinium for fancy dining and a formal peristyle courtyard enclosed by porticoes on four sides. This final area was the most imposing area of the palace, and it was there that Salome must have danced for Herod Antipas. We even know where the king sat: A semi-circular apse marks the space for King Herod’s (and later his son Tetrarch Herod Antipas’s) throne in the axial center of the peristyle courtyard.

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Part of a stairway (nine steps) confirmed the existence of a second floor above the triclinium. Ten pillar bases in the triclinium supported columns, which in turn supported five arches that served as the underlying backbone of the roof. The palace also included some storerooms similar to those found at Masada—a site comparison to be returned to later in this article.

Some of the columns of Herod’s peristyle courtyard have been re-erected (the technical architectural term for this is anastilosis). Unfortunately, the columns were mistakenly reconstructed as Ionic columns because the Franciscan excavators found an Ionic capital elsewhere at the site. But examination of the peristyle courtyard revealed Doric columns and several column-prints (Doric columns have no base) on the stylobate of the porticoes. In fact, the columns of the peristyle courtyard were confirmed as Doric by the many column drums: The circumference of the largest Ionic column drum is still smaller than the smallest drum of a Doric column. In the next few years, we hope to reconstruct the peristyle courtyard’s columns correctly.

Machaerus’s lower city sits on the northeastern slope of the mountain where thousands of people lived, according to Josephus.⁶ John the Baptist would have been imprisoned in this lower city before he was beheaded. The Franciscan Fathers excavated only the two side walls of the lower city and the adjacent area. The lower city of Machaerus deserves more extensive archaeological excavation.

This brings us to the third period of occupation at Machaerus—that of the Zealots, the same group of Jewish rebels who occupied Masada during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Indeed, in many respects Machaerus is Masada’s parallel on the other side of the Dead Sea—in its occupation by the rebels, in the circumvallation siege wall that the Romans built to starve out the rebels and prevent their escape, and even in the beginning of a Roman siege ramp built to reach the fortified site. But there is a little twist at the end.

Josephus describes Machaerus as “a very rocky hill, elevated to a very great height, which circumstance alone made it very hard to be subdued. It was also contrived by nature, that it could not be easily ascended; for it is, as it were, ditched about with such valleys on all sides, and to such a depth, that the eye cannot reach their bottoms.”⁷

Josephus’s description of the rebels’ occupation of Machaerus⁸ is confirmed by archaeological evidence. The rebels reinforced the exterior wall of the fortress, which would have been largely destroyed by that time.

The rebels also stocked the site “with an abundance of weapons and engines and studied to make every preparation to enable its inmates to defy the longest siege.”⁹ As at Masada, the Romans responded with a circumvallation siege wall.

The similarities continue with the still-visible outline of the Roman camps behind the siege wall. The famous Legio X Fretensis, the same Tenth Roman Legion that subdued Masada, had attacked Machaerus shortly before. The Tenth Legion used the same techniques at both sites.

At Masada, the Romans erected a massive ramp to gain access to the summit of the site, from which they attacked and easily defeated the rebels.^a Faced with the prospect of murder or slavery at the hands of the Romans, the rebels took the lives of their families and then committed suicide, according to Josephus.

The Romans began to build a massive ramp at Machaerus, too, that can still be seen. It was partially built of natural local stones without mortar, but it was never completed. According to Josephus, the Romans captured Eleazar, a young rebel from a large and distinguished family, who had recklessly wandered outside the gate. The Roman general Lucilius Bassus “ordered Eleazar to be stripped and carried to the spot most exposed to the view of the 041 onlookers in the city and there severely scourged him.” Josephus tells us that the Machaerus rebels were “profoundly affected by the lad’s fate,” and “the whole town burst into such wailing and lamentation as the misfortune of a mere individual seemed hardly to justify.”

Noting this, Bassus erected a wooden cross as if to prepare for Eleazar’s crucifixion. As Bassus had intended, this led to the negotiations that saved Eleazar’s life and gave the residents of Machaerus permission “to depart in safety.” In these circumstances, the ramp that the Romans were building was never completed and the still-existing uncompleted ramp testifies to the essential veracity of Josephus’s account. Unlike the rebels at Masada, the rebels at the Machaerus citadel survived.

Apparently this compact did not apply to the Jews in the lower city of Machaerus. Some Jews tried to escape the Roman siege at night but were caught in their effort to break through the Roman ranks. The Romans proceeded to slay the 1,700 men living there and enslave the women and children.¹⁰ Thus ended the settlement of Machaerus.

Salome danced at Machaerus. And John the Baptist was beheaded there. The gospel story is supplemented by the Jewish historian Josephus: It all began when Herod Antipas (King Herod the Great’s son who ruled Galilee and Perea between 4 B.C. and 39 A.D.; see the following article) lusted after his brother’s wife Herodias. Herod Antipas persuaded Herodias to divorce her husband and marry him. This union was denounced as unlawful by John the Baptist,1 which naturally made Herodias furious with him. During her first marriage, Herodias had born a daughter named Salome, who danced for her new step-father, Herod […]