Image Details

The caves of Masada. In one of the caves on the southeastern side of Masada, exactly where Yadin believed it most likely that the Romans would have thrown the remains of Masada’s defenders, he discovered approximately 206 scattered human bones. In his popular book on the excavation, published in 1966, Yadin described these as the remains of 25 of the site’s 960 Jewish defenders. Curiously, Zias notes, neither the bones nor Yadin’s claims about them were mentioned in any of the five volumes of his scientific report, published in the ensuing years.