Masada Fortress (Isreal)

King Herrod is sometimes referred to as King Herrod the builder since he built so many fortresses and temples across Israel during his reign around the time of Christ. Just as he is depicted in the bible when Jesus was born, he was very paranoid about his loss of power. The Masada fortress’ construction demonstrates this, firstly in its existence but also in its layout and number of secondary and tertiary defenses.  Although never used by Herrod, the fortress would be used to its fullest though by the Zealots who rose up against their Roman rulers about 100 years after it was captured by Herrod. The fortress itself is located on top of a 400m cliff making it an excellent place to hide out.

The Zealots were able to hold off a legion (roughly 15,000 roman troops) for an estimated 2 to 3 months. The Romans were not be able to starve out the zealots by surrounding the fortress, or die of thirst thanks to the ingenious water collection system spread out across the landscape collecting into cisterns. Realizing this, the Romans set out to build a ramp from the west to breach the fortress. The people who were inside the fortress used throwing round boulders to kill the soldiers who were constructing the ramp. Progress on the ramp took shape when they brought other Jewish slaves from elsewhere in Israel to complete the construction.

Realizing their fate, the survivors committed to one another not to live a life without freedom and a mass suicide occurred on the last night before the wall was breached. Since suicide is forbidden by Judaism, it’s believed that 9 men were responsible for taking the lives of others, and then each other’s, until only 1 man would have to kill himself. Later, we found out that part of the Israeli military's oath is "Masada shall not fall again!" - a very interesting insight into how connected the past, present and future are in this region.

After this, we had about an hour’s drive to Jerusalem, passing Israeli settlements and the West Bank. The desert landscape with modern buildings and how settlements have developed in the political climate is a sight to see in itself - we agreed that the landscape was so different to us that it could be the set of a sci-fi movie on another planet.