The main details of the famous 1st-century Roman siege on Masada are extremely well-known: The years-long Roman soldiers’ encampment below the walls, the Jewish rebels’ last stand after the destruction of Jerusalem and then their suicide pact as the Romans finally breached the walls.
The events have become part of Israel’s cultural narrative of resilience and nationalism, promulgated by history textbooks, Zionist education projects and obligatory visits to the desert fortress, an Israeli national park.
However, recent research by a team of Tel Aviv University archaeologists may upend the Masada legend by asserting that the siege likely lasted just a few weeks and not years. Likewise, the primary motivation for the Romans in assaulting Masada wasn’t to defeat the last holdout of the Jewish rebellion but rather to preserve the supply of lucrative balsam, a perfume produced in nearby Ein Gedi.
“The important question is: Why did they decide to besiege Masada? Until recently, the Masada siege has been looked at through the eyes of the besieged, but the decision to send soldiers was a Roman one,” said Dr. Guy Stiebel, senior lecturer in Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, speaking to The Times of Israel by phone.
Stiebel, who has led a series of excavations at Masada since 2017 as head of the Neustadter Masada Expedition, authored, together with Dr. Hai Ashkenazi of TAU and the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ph.D. students Omer Ze’evi-Berger and Boaz Gross, “The Roman siege system of Masada: a 3D computerized analysis of a conflict landscape,” published on August 31 in the Journal of Roman Archaeology (Cambridge University Press).
The paper presents a first thorough data-driven study of the well-preserved Roman stone fortifications and camps around Masada, based on high-tech surveying and analysis methodologies.
By comparing the volume and design of the Roman fortifications with carefully sourced human workload calculations, the researchers determined that the Romans built the siege fortifications around Masada in only 11-16 days and were able to breach the fortress shortly thereafter.
“Based on our findings we argue that the Roman siege of Masada took a few weeks at the most. As empires throughout history have done, the Romans came, saw and conquered, quickly and brutally quelling the uprising in this remote location,” Stiebel said.
“We know that there were 6-8,000 Roman soldiers. And we have data and charts showing how many stones young soldiers can move in a day,” Stiebel explained on the phone. He noted that the manpower information came from sources such as Roman engineering records describing projections for building projects and WWII-era US Army studies that had recruits lift and move stones to measure their physical fitness.
“The data is very clear. We are talking about a very short period to build the siege system,” he said.
Stiebel explained that while the three-year duration of the siege is now part of the common story of Masada, this figure was only put forth by historians in the 1960s, based on an assumption that after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the remaining rebels fled straight to Masada, pursued by the Romans, only to be destroyed in 73 CE.
Crucially, a specific duration for the siege wasn’t mentioned by Josephus, the Jewish-Roman historian whose writings are the major source of information about Masada and the Jewish Revolt, Stiebel said.
The other major argument for a shorter siege is the archaeological record around the Roman camp as uncovered by previous expeditions, which shows none of the evidence for a long stay by the Roman soldiers, he said.
If they had been encamped there for years, there would be extensive trash piles, food and animal remains, discarded artifacts, graves and other signs such as those found in other long-term Roman camps, but there isn’t, “and this clearly shows us that this episode was a short one,” Stiebel explained.
The particular logistics of Masada, a deep desert fortress whose closest source of water is Ein Gedi, which lies 18 kilometers (11 miles) away, further indicates part of the Roman motivation for a shorter siege, Stiebel said.
The Roman army’s modus operandi was, “We came, we saw, we conquered. That is how imperial armies work. The clear interest of an empire is to be as quick as it can. There is a huge cost if you send thousands of soldiers, you need to supply them and their animals,” he said.
Precious balsam
The Jewish rebels at Masada were called “Sicarii” by Josephus, but Sicarii means “bandits” in Latin, Stiebel explained.
“We are used to calling them ‘zealots,’ but a lot of different kinds of people and groups ended up at Masada,” he said.
Instead of one monolithic faction of rebel warriors making a last stand, those who gathered at Masada seems to have been a diverse group of refugees, “fleeing far away from the Romans,” Stiebel said.
But the dominant faction at Masada was indeed “the bandits,” who, as noted by Josephus, sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem went down from Masada to Ein Gedi in a raid. They killed hundreds of women and children at the balsam plantation there after the workers fled, and disrupted production of the precious fragrance. It was an effective raid designed to damage Roman interests in the region.
Balsam, produced by the sap of certain trees, “was a luxury product, like modern perfumes that come in very small, expensive bottles. And there was a big demand for this,” Stiebel said. Balsam was a true precious commodity in the ancient world and the Ein Gedi plantation, along with two others near Jericho, had been coveted by historical figures such as Alexander the Great and Cleopatra.
“The moment that they damaged the balsam production, they affected empire finances… We know that the revolt happened during a period of weakness in the Roman Empire. They needed money. And it seems [the raid] crossed a red line for the Romans,” he said, so they sent their soldiers to destroy the perpetrators.
Instead of being just an effort to destroy the last pocket of Jewish resistance to Roman rule, Stiebel said, “one of the main reasons was economical. We have to ask, what happened suddenly, three years after the fall of Jerusalem, to make them suddenly remember Masada?”
Culture wars
Since the study results were publicized last week, there have been hundreds of “interesting reactions” on Hebrew social media and news sites, Stiebel said.
“The narrative of Masada, the Great Jewish Revolt, the siege, and the tragic end as related by Flavius Josephus, have all become part of Israeli DNA and the Zionist ethos… The duration of the siege is a major element in this narrative, suggesting that the glorious Roman army found it very difficult to take the fortress and crush its defenders,” he noted in a prepared statement about the research.
People feel the research changes that iconic Masada story and reduces the narrative of the Jews holding out for so long against the Romans. “There are a lot of political and personal reactions,” he said.
The new research at Masada “doesn’t necessarily change” the core aspects of the Masada narrative, he stressed, just presents new, scientific information that brings deeper historical understanding. Furthermore, the study results are in line with other research “from the last 20 years” that has questioned the duration of the siege.
Various historians and research over the years have also questioned Josephus’s account that all the Jewish holdouts committed suicide rather than be taken by the Romans, another deeply symbolic aspect of the Masada narrative.
Although “this is not the focus of the research that was published at the moment, it is clear to me that suicides did occur at the site,” Stiebel said. “However, this must be seen in the broader context of the meaning of life and death in antiquity, and of suicide in the Roman period in particular,” he added, and not in relation to “how we judge suicide today.”
“It is interesting how personally people take this. These are events that happened 2,000 years ago!” Stiebel said. “Masada is a kind of mirror into Israeli society – how we look at Masada shows a lot of the political and social changes society has undergone.”
