Endnote 4 – It’s a Natural: Masada Ramp Was Not a Roman Engineering Miracle

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.