The Roman siege of Jewish rebels at Masada, one of the founding myths of modern Israelmay have been much faster and more efficient and brutal than traditionally imagined, according to new archaeological research.
The end of the AD72-73 Jewish Revolt is conventionally depicted as a heroic last stand against the power of Rome by a handful of rebels who ultimately killed themselves rather than be overwhelmed by the Emperor Vespasian’s forces.
Located on a high desert plateau overlooking the Dead Sea, the fortress of Masada was captured by the Sicari, an extremist faction of the Jewish Zealot rebels. It is now one of Israel’s most famous tourist attractions.
The events of the siege were particularly described by the historian Josephus FlaviusA Jewish commander during the war who surrendered and then befriended the commander of the Roman forces, Vespasian’s son Titus.
Josephus’ account of Masada in The Jewish War – a book published in AD75 – has long been questioned by academics, with some expressing doubt that the mass suicide of around 1,000 Zealots actually took place.
New research suggests a dramatically different version of events. Building on excavations in the 1990s, a paper in the Journal of Roman Archeology by Hai Ashkenazi, Omer Ze’evi Berger, Boaz Gross and Guy Steibel suggests that the besiegers’ strategy – including the construction of the great siege wall surrounding Masada – a triumph was of Roman efficiency.
The researchers estimate that the siege wall could have been completed by the 6,000-8,000 soldiers in less than two weeks, leaving them free to concentrate on building a ramp that eventually breached the fortress.
The study is consistent with previous research that suggested the ramp could have been completed within a month, all pointing to a much shorter time frame for the siege, which may have lasted two months rather than two years.
“Our workload calculations show that 5,000 men could have built the siege system around Masada in 11-16 days,” wrote the archaeologists, who used drones and 3D modeling to examine the siege constructions and related camps.
Stiebel, the lead author of the study, told Haaretz: “From the Roman perspective, it was not such a big story. It was not like the siege of Jerusalem [which lasted five months and took place in AD70]. They came, they made a precision strike and they left after a few weeks.
“The fact that the siege lasted less time than we thought does not make the site less interesting or less important. It still raises questions that are no less exciting.
“Why did the Romans make this effort, years after the official end of the war, to send 6,000-8,000 soldiers into the middle of the desert? It is still a large logistics enterprise. That means it was still very important to them.”
For Stiebel and some other academics, the suspicion is that the reason for the siege was far from forceful, but more prosaic: the rebels were threatening the supply of a valuable but long-forgotten perfume, balsam, from which it was manufactured. the nearby wadi at Ein Gedi.
