Holy Land Tour Post 5

Thoughts on Masada

Most people who visit Masada think of the human story of the desire for independence and freedom from slavery that was exhibited by the Jews who committed suicide (almost 1000 of them) rather than be captured by the Romans and turned into slaves. That story is commented on in another blog by one of my fellow travelers.

I have spent over forty years working as an engineer so my interest was in the engineering and logistical aspects as well as the human story.

Anyone who has studied ancient warfare understands that it is advantageous to place a fortress on high ground. It is hard to attack. The problem is that of water and food if the fortress is put under siege. Since water flows downhill, it is hard to supply a high mountaintop fortress with water unless there is a spring nearby.

Every king and every general has engineers and logistics personnel on their staff. The logistics experts are concerned with, in today’s armed forces, “beans, bullets, & fuel” and everything in between. It concerns the flow of goods & materials from the point of origin to the point of consumption. If a commander outruns or exhausts his supply line, he has a major problem. The same held true back when the fortress and the siege were the primary method of warfare. Instead of beans, bullets, and fuel it would be weapons such as spears, shields, fuel for fire, food, horses, donkeys, and water.

It was the job of the engineer to either (1) design & built the siege machines or (2) design & built the fortress to withstand the siege machines. So, while some folks view the battle as between warriors and tactics, I tend to view it as a battle of ideas and designs. If the engineers and logistic folks don’t do their jobs well, the battle may be lost before it starts.

Masada is a high mountain plateau (mesa, rock cliff) in the desert of Judea in Israel (formerly Palestine) right next to the Dead Sea. This mountain plateau sits on sloping land, essentially a long mountain ridge, so that one side of the mesa rises higher above the land below than the other side. The eastern face of the mesa is 450 meters tall (1500 feet). This is the side that faces the Dead Sea and it gives quite a spectacular view of the sea. On the western side of the mesa, the face is 100 meters high (330 feet). The top of the mesa measures 600 meters by 300 meters (2000 feet by 1000 feet). For readers who are not familiar with metric measurement, a yard and a meter are about the same length. So the top of this mesa is six football fields long and three football fields wide.

Herod The Great (some folks dispute the title as he murdered most of his family and betrayed his fellow Jews) was a Idumean (one of the several tribes or subtribes in the greater Judean area). He was a practicing Jew and was a client King of Judea appointed by the Roman Senate. Herod was quite practiced in currying favor and playing the politics demanded of Kings and their courts. He is well known for his colossal building projects; the most well known one is the expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Herod was smart enough to understand that his Kingdom could be invaded by neighbors or that the Romans could turn on him if he made a mistake and alienated them. So one of his colossal building projects was to build a fortress with all the comforts of living the Roman life, including a bathhouse, on top of Masada. He had access to Roman engineers as well as to the Arabic and Jewish engineers in the region. So from 37 to 31 BCE his engineers and logisticians built this fortress on a rocky mountain mesa in one of the most arid places on earth.

In order to live anywhere, people have to have water, food, salt, shelter, sanitation, and protection from invaders. Building the fortress on top a high rocky cliff plateau (mesa) gives protection against invaders but it complicates all the other aspects of the necessities of life. Herod’s engineers and logisticians built a masterpiece of a fortress that included a casement wall (think two walls with rooms in between) 1400 feet long with halls, rooms, and living quarters between the two sides of the wall. For water, they dug out huge cisterns at the base of the mesa on the uphill side. They put in a series of ditches that would channel the runoff down the slopes of the long mountain ridge into the cisterns. It only rains in this area a few months of the year so they had to capture as much runoff as possible every time it rained. Having the water at the base of the mesa does not help the folks living on top the mesa. To solve this problem, they dug large cisterns on top the mesa that could hold over a million gallons of water. The problem then became how to get the water from down below up to the top. The answer is donkeys (and, I suspect, slaves). A pint of water weighs a pound. So a gallon of water weighs eight pounds. A donkey can carry between 60 and 90 pounds depending on the size of the donkey. So one donkey can carry between 8 gallons and 11 gallons of water. A slave can carry half that much and still be able to climb the side of the mesa. So it is going to take a lot of trips up the mountain by lots of donkeys who drink lots of water. Herod’s engineers really took on a major endeavor but they succeeded. There was enough water on top for swimming pools and a Roman bathhouse. All this in an absolute desert area that is hot and below sea level.

On top the mountain (mesa) they built storehouses for food, barracks, an armory, and several palaces as well as the Roman bathhouse so Herod could live there and entertain visitors in relative safety.

Approximately 75 years after Herod’s death (66 CE), Masada was a Roman garrison. During the Jewish uprising against the Romans, a group of Jewish rebels overcame the Roman garrison and began stocking the fortress with supplies and water. Four years later came the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. The Jews at Masada were joined by zealots and their families who had fled Jerusalem. This increased the population on the mesa to just less than one thousand. For two years, this Jewish group of rebels, raided and harassed the Romans. Then in 73 CE, the Roman governor marched the Tenth Roman Legion against Masada. By this time, the Jews living on the mesa had laid in stores of food and water that should last them for five years. So now the battle became one of siege. The Jews on Masada held out for over a year while the Romans constructed a siege engine (battering ram) to batter down the wall on top of the mesa. To get the battering ram up to the wall, the Roman army constructed a rampart of thousands of tons of rock, rubble, and dirt. The Jews on top could tell exactly where the battering ram would be located and they reinforced the rock wall with wood beams lashed together to help protect the wall from the blows. Unfortunately, when the time came, the use of liquid fire being poured by the defenders onto the Romans also set the wood on fire. With the wood reduced to cinders, it was not long before the battering ram did its job and the Romans gained entry only to find every defender had perished to avoid being carried into slavery.

This story could have swung either way. If the Roman logistic’s men had been unable to provide supplies for the 10th Roman Legion as they encamped below Masada, they would have been forced to leave. If the defenders of Masada could have reinforced the wall or stopped the construction of the rampart they could have outlasted the Romans. In the end, the tactical battle was won by a superior force whose engineers and logisticians had years and years of experience and knew exactly what to do to achieve the tactical victory.

Picture courtesy of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

By R. Lance Remick