After passing over undulating hills, we reached the head of a gorge finer than any we had seen before, and crossing the shingly bed of the great valley, we climbed on to a white plain, at the end of which, eight miles from camp, we perceived an isolated square block of hill, with a flat plateau at the top, and vertical walls of rock all round. This crag has a great valley on either side, and a narrow plain beneath it on the east, reaching to the Dead Sea shore. As we descended into the northern gorge, we saw a large herd of what I at first took for gazelles, but as they cantered across the plain their great rounded horns showed them to be the Beden, or ibex, the “wild goats” of the Bible, which abound among the precipices in this pathless waste.
The rock of Masada measures 350 yards east and west, by 690 yards north and south, and its cliffs are 1500 feet in height above the plain on the east. Two paths lead up to the plateau on the top, that on the east being a winding ascent, now almost impassable, but by which Captain Warren went up; this is apparently the path called the “Serpent” by Josephus. The second path, on the west, ascends from a narrow sloping bank of white marl, which is about 1000 feet high, and which Josephus calls the “White Promontory;” upon this rises the great ramp, about 300 feet high, which the Romans piled up against the rock during the siege, a work so laborious that it seems almost incredible that human efforts could have accomplished it, in so short a time. At the top of the ramp is the masonry wall which the besiegers built as a foundation for their engines, before discovering the great tragedy that had been enacted within the fortress, where the garrison had fallen by one another’s swords (B. J. vii. 8, 4).
A fatiguing climb brought us to the plateau at the top. Here is a pointed archway, indicative of Crusading masons, and scored with the tribe-marks of the Jâhalin, and Rushâideh Arabs, which were on a former occasion mistaken by a distinguished Frenchman for planetary signs.
We fell to work at once with tape and compass to plan and describe the ruins. The buildings are principally on the north-west part of the rock, and they are of various dates. The most ancient appear to be the long rude walls, resembling the buildings at Herodium (Jebel Fureidis), but the majority of the masonry is to be ascribed to the Christians of the fifth or twelfth centuries. There is a chapel on the plateau, and also a cave, in which I found a curious inscription with crosses, which is, apparently, a new discovery. It is painted in red, and resembles some of the twelfth and thirteenth century inscriptions near Jericho.
The most extraordinary feature of this wonderful place has yet to be noticed. The Romans in their attack on Masada followed the same method which had reduced Jerusalem. They surrounded the unhappy Jews with a wall of circumvallation. Looking down from the summit, the ruins of this wall—a drystone parapet, running across the plain and up the southern hill-slopes—could be distinctly traced.
Two large camps, also walled with stone, lay spread out behind this line on the west and east, and six smaller ones, like redoubts, on the low ground; the entire length of the wall was not less than 3000 yards, as measured on our plan, and the whole remains almost as it was left eighteen centuries ago, when the victorious army marched away to Italy, leaving behind, in this waterless wilderness, proofs of the genius of the great nation of engineers, which found no task beyond its power, and which, even here, eleven miles away from the nearest considerable spring, and twenty miles from any source of provisions, was capable of crushing the desperate resistance of a nation which had so long defied the monarchs of Asia and Egypt.
At Cæsarea we had occasion to reflect on Josephus’s exaggerated statements, but at Masada we cannot but admire the exactitude of his description. The wall of the citadel he makes to be seven furlongs in length, the actual measurement being 4880 feet. The length of thirty furlongs, which he states as that of the “Serpent” ascent, would give a gradient about equal to that of the great descent at Engedi. The remains of a building 200 feet square still lie close to the western ascent, where Josephus places Herod’s palace. On the “White Promontory” Silva erected his mound, 200 cubits high, and on the top of the mound he built a stone wall, fifty cubits high, making a total of some 350 feet, which seems a very correct estimate of the height of the existing ramp and wall at the western ascent. Finally, Silva’s camp was pitched in a convenient place, where the hills approached nearest to the rock of the fortress, and just at this point, opposite, the western ascent, the ruins of the largest Roman camp still stand.
The silent record of the great struggle is the circle of stone which, guarded by Roman soldiers, shut out from the Sicarii all hope of escape; but though we know the history of the siege, no tradition exists of it among the Arabs. I pointed out the wall and camp to our guides, and received the usual reply: “They are ruined vineyards of the Christians.”
For five hours we worked hard on the summit of the hill, and it was no easy task to drag the measuring line against the furious wind, which now began to rage, and over the fallen blocks of Herod’s palace. I was disappointed in my attempt to reach the towers which lie half-way down the cliff on the north. The rope-ladders were too short, and there was nothing to which we could fix them, while the fury of the wind would have rendered the descent over the crag most hazardous.
We rode back to Bîr esh Sherky much fatigued, but the great wind kept us awake all night, and rain again fell heavily on our unprotected beasts.