Besieging Masada

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

Dramatically placed on a plateau with drops of 400m to the east and 90m to the west, Masada translates from Hebrew as fortress. It became just that when Herod the Great built a magnificent palace complex upon it between 37 and 31 BC, the remains of which are in fantastic shape today. But the site isn’t only notable for its connection to the bible-famed King of Judaea. Masada was also the stronghold of some of the survivors of a Jewish revolt and, in response, the locus of a Roman siege in the early 70s AD. For this first of two parts, Tristan spoke to Jodi Magness from the University of North Carolina. Jodi co-directed the 1995 excavations of the Roman siege works at Masada, and in this episode she tells Tristan about the archaeological findings at the site, many of which are still visible to the untrained eye.

Jodi is the author of 'Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth'.

Part 2, which will focus on the fall of Masada, the myths and the siege's legacy, will be released in the coming weeks.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast
0:08.6	we are talking about that famous siege, the siege of Masada that occurred in 72-73 AD.
0:17.6	Now this is the first part of a two-part podcast with the brilliant archaeologist Jody Magnus.
0:24.1	Jody is a professor from the University of North Carolina. She's conducted excavations at Masada.
0:30.2	And in this first part we look at the background to the siege, we look at the history of the
0:35.3	site of Masada itself and in particular we focus on the archaeology that survives,
0:40.4	particularly the Roman camps, the Roman siege works. Part two will be out in a couple of weeks.
0:47.0	Here's Jody.
0:48.3	Jody, it is great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Not at all. This is an amazing
0:58.4	topic. Masada is remarkable ancient stronghold and your archaeological work at the site. Can we say
1:05.5	it's been sorting the fact from the fiction about this epic tale? Wow, I think that's a lot to say,
1:11.8	but yeah, I mean I think one of the things that we do with archaeology is to try to add information
1:18.2	about the past from a new source. And so I don't know about fact from fiction,
1:24.3	but certainly at least some of my work and the work of others has helped to shed new light
1:28.8	on what we know about Masada and what we know about the period of Masada.
1:33.2	You've been shedding amazing new light on Masada. There we go. Well let's dive into the background
1:38.8	first of all and no such thing as a silly question. Where and what is Masada?
1:44.8	Well I think that's actually where you absolutely have to start and not everybody will
1:48.8	necessarily be familiar with it. But anyway, Masada is a mountain located on the southwest shore
1:55.5	of the Dead Sea. It is interesting because its name Masada in Hebrew means Fort Ophortras
2:02.3	because it is a natural fortress. It's a mountain that is separated from all the other mountains
2:07.2	around it on all sides, which means it has very steep cliffs going all the way around. That makes
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