Image Details

Though Masada is often pictured as a lone mountain, it is actually part of a 6-mile-long horst, or uplifted block, that formed along the fault lines near the Dead Sea. The drawing, looking down on Masada from the north, shows a geological cross-section through the western spur; the two sections of the Bina Formation, shown on either side of the fault, were once at the same level and were covered by the relatively softer rocks in the Menuha and Mishash formations. Over many hundreds of thousand years, the Menuha and Mishash formations have been eroded away except in the area of the western spur.