The Ancients - Myths of Masada

Episode Date: February 14, 2021

In 73 AD, 967 Jewish rebels against the Romans committed mass suicide atop the Masada Fortress. Or did they? In this second part of Tristan’s interview with Jodi Magness from the University of North Carolina, who co-directed the 1995 excavations of the Roman siege works at Masada, we separate myth from mystery. Jodi weighs the question of Josephus’ sole account of this event against the archaeological evidence, and the external forces which may have influenced the mythologising of Masada.Jodi is the author of 'Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth'.Part 1: historyhit.com/masada1

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast we are continuing the story of Masada with the enthralling Professor Jodie Magnus. It was fantastic to see how well received the first episode was that was released last week, and

today we are continuing the story. In this second part we are going to be looking at the myths of Masada, we're going to be looking at the end of the siege and we're also going to have a look at the legacy of Masada into more recent times, particularly its importance to the state of Israel. Here's Jodie. of Israel. Here's Jodie. If we go back to the siege then, Jodie, and we've talked about the camp and you've mentioned the siege ramp because you've done some work on the siege ramp when you were out there. So the Romans, they have to build the siege ramp to get to Masada and the fortifications. What does your work on the siege ram reveal about it? Yeah, that was really interesting. So Josephus actually, you know, you asked before about

Josephus's accuracy. And in my opinion, Josephus's description of the siege of Masada is overwhelmingly accurate. It doesn't mean it's accurate in every single detail. There is one detail that's fairly significant that it's not accurate in, but overall, with regard to the siege, not the story of the mass suicide, but the siege, his description of the siege is pretty darn accurate, or at least corresponds very well with the archaeological remains. One of the things that Josephus describes is that when Flavia Silva comes in, he's got to build this assault ramp. Where are you going to build it? He notices that on the western side of the mountain, not far from the foot of the mountain, is a natural white hill, which Josephus actually calls in Greek the White Hill, Lefki. And what Flavius Silva does is he fills up the space

between this hill and the top of the mountain to create the assault ramp. Now, there's been a long debate about whether there's actually already some sort of a talus or a natural slope between that White Hill and the top of Masada somewhere under the ramp. And so geologists have done these various studies. So we got a section through the ramp. And as far as we got, and we didn't get all the way to the bottom of it, not even close, but as far as we got, we didn't get to a natural talus. So there may well be a natural talus under the ramp, but we didn't get that far to reach it. But what we did find, and this was what's so interesting, is that when you walk up the ramp today, and you can, that's actually one of the ways to get up to the Taba Masada,

it looks like it's made of just this white chalky, very fine white chalky dust that poofs up under your feet when you walk, mixed with little stones. But we found actually that the ramp was constructed of a wooden framework where the Romans took pieces of wood, and it's all local wood, it's all desert wood, so it's tamarisk and apalm. And they took these pieces of wood and they laid some of them flat, and then they took others and they stuck them vertically into the ground to form, you could say, sort of large boxes, wooden boxes, which they then filled with stones. And all the stones are about the size one man can pick up and carry. And these were then terraced to make the ramp. And I have pictures of this, you know, from the excavation. The wood looks like it was chopped down yesterday. It's preserved amazingly because of the dryness of the atmosphere. And in fact, when we found this wood, I took samples of it. And there's a lab at Cornell

University where they do tree ring dating, dendrochronology. And I gave them some of our samples, not because we needed to have the wood dated. To the contrary, I thought that they could use our wood in their tree ring dating sequence because we know when our wood was used, right? But unfortunately, there weren't enough tree rings in our pieces of wood and they couldn't fit them into their sequence. So they ended up sending them back to me. But the wood is actually amazing and you could see exactly how this was constructed. Slight tangent, because I think I remember seeing some time ago the movie Masada and it shows the more infamous side of it. And you

mentioned already slaves. Was it the slave labor force that was creating this ramp? I'm glad you asked that. And before I answer, I have to tell you, actually, that that was a made-for-TV movie back in the late 1970s, right? And it starred Peter O'Toole and Peter Strauss. And I happened to be working in that area at the time. I was a guide at En Gedi. And I took lots of groups on field trips to Masada while they were filming that. And I never got to see Peter O'Toole or Peter Strauss, but they set up the movie set next to Camp F and they actually built a fake ramp. They used delusion to make it look like, so they made this kind of earth ramp, but it

didn't go very far. But the way that they filmed it, it looked like it went up to the top of Masada. And they had fake boulders. They had these huge styrofoam boulders that were spray painted to look like real boulders. And for a long time afterwards, so after they finished, those were left lying around. And we used to go and pick them up. And you could pick up a huge boulder with one hand because it was just styrofoam. And they also had the actors on the set who were dressed like Roman soldiers. It was very cool,

actually. But anyway, I was very disappointed, by the way, that I never got to see, especially Peter O'Toole. But no, so that's actually another one of the many myths. People talk about the Masada myth, but there are actually a number of Masada myths. And one of the Masada myths is that the siege took three years. And another one is that it was Jewish slaves who built the Roman ramp. So the short answer to that is no. This was what the Roman army did. Roman soldiers at this point, it's a professional standing army, which means that if you enlisted for service in the Roman army at this time, you did it as a career for your lifetime. And you were trained in every aspect of the operation. So basically, the ramp was built by the Roman soldiers. That was the most efficient way to do it, by the way. But there were Jewish slaves at the siege of Masada, and Josephus refers to them,

but they were basically, I don't know if you know the Yiddish word schleppers. They carried the burdens, they did the hard stuff. But the actual siege works, the construction was done by the Roman soldiers. That's really interesting. And that's one of the myths. And then I guess let's go on towards one of the next big myths, continuing the siege, as it were. The Romans, they've got the ramp to the top.

They've pushed the battering ram up to the top, breaching through the walls. What happens next, Jodie? So for what happens next, we rely on Josephus. And what Josephus says is that at this point it became inevitable, or it was inevitable, that the mountain was going to fall to the Romans. And the head of the Jewish rebels on Topal Masada, a man named Elazar Binyair, convened all of the men together, perhaps in a room that Yadin identified as a synagogue, meaning a meeting hall.

And he gave them a couple of speeches. And again, all of this, according to Josephus, in these speeches, Elazar Bin Yair convinced the men that the best way to rob the Romans of their hard-won victory would be if they all took their own lives. And he convinced them to do this. And so all of the men got together and they killed their wives and children. And then the men drew lots, and out of them, 10 men killed the others. And then those 10 remaining men drew lots again,

and one man killed the other nine and then killed himself. And so the story goes, when the Romans came up to the top of the mountain, everybody had committed suicide. By the way, notice that according to Josephus' story, there's only one suicide at Masada, meaning only one man dies at his own hand. Everybody else is killed by somebody else. And the reason why I mentioned this is because there's a big controversy in Judaism. Suicide is prohibited by biblical law. So technically there's only one suicide at Masada, although I have a very distinguished, esteemed colleague who's an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Larry Schiffman at New York University, who pointed out to me not very long ago, homicide is also prohibited by Jewish law. So that doesn't make it any better. And so maybe you could call it a mass homicide instead of a mass suicide. But

so the Romans then come up. So then the question is, well, if everybody committed suicide, how do we know the story? So the story goes that not everybody committed suicide, that there were a couple of old women who overheard the plans and they hid out in a cistern on the side of the mountain with some children. And when the Romans came up, they gave themselves up to the Romans and somehow either directly or indirectly, the story was told to Josephus who then reports it. So that's the story as we have it. Now that story of the mass suicide is what has been so controversial in recent years about Masada. Before I go on, I will say that this controversy has mainly developed in the years since Yedin excavated Masada.

So when Yedin excavated the top of Masada in the 1960s, scholars still pretty much interpreted, and this was true of Yedin too, interpreted Josephus quite literally. So it took him at his word. interpreted Josephus quite literally, so took him at his word. But what has happened in more recent years, and this is a trend in scholarship in general, is that scholars have begun to look at Josephus and other ancient sources less literally and more critically and question whether in fact all the information is true or not. So this is just a broader trend in scholarship. And in interpreting Josephus literally, there was nothing wrong with what Yadin was doing within the context of his time. That was the way, generally speaking, people looked at Josephus literally, there was nothing wrong with what Yadin was doing within the context of his time. That was the way, generally speaking, people looked at Josephus at that point. So Yadin, when he excavated the top of Masada, understood things in light of what Josephus reported.

But what scholars have noticed or pointed out in recent years in questioning Josephus is that if you look at Josephus's stories of the revolt and other stories in his works, you see that there are numerous cases where an episode will end with a mass suicide. So, for example, the siege of Jotapeta, which is the last fortress in Galilee that Josephus was in charge of, he reports, self-reports, that all the soldiers under his command committed mass suicide, and he actually gives himself up alive to the Romans afterwards. There's supposedly, according to Josephus, an episode at Gamla, a Jewish town in the Golan, where in 67, the Jews threw themselves over the cliffs rather than give themselves up alive to the Romans. So there's these various episodes. And what scholars have

questioned in recent years is, could it be that all of these people were really committing mass suicide? Or could it be that Josephus fabricated this as a literary device to make the story more exciting? And by the way, if that's it, then it's true. We would not be having this conversation about Masada if it wasn't for Josephus' mass suicide story. That's why everybody is fascinated with Masada. So it certainly does succeed if it's a literary device. But the question is then, is it true or is it not? So just on literary grounds alone, you might then say,

well, but wait a minute, the Romans were present at Masada. And Josephus, when he wrote his works, he was actually commissioned to write his works by his imperial patrons, Vespasian and his family, the Flavians, who were the ones who put down the first Jewish revolt against the Romans. And so the Romans were there. And you might then wonder, well, wait a minute, wouldn't the Romans have objected if Josephus started to make stuff up? I mean, this is supposed to be a history, right? Wouldn't the Romans have said, wait a minute, Josephus, this isn't accurate. The problem with that objection is that it expects that the Romans would want objective

history in the way that we expect history to be objective today. Now, you can even question whether there is anything such as an objective history. But we do, when we read history, we expect a certain amount of objectivity. We don't expect things to be completely fabricated, right? So wouldn't the Romans have objected? And the answer actually is no, they would not. it, right? So wouldn't the Romans have objected? And the answer actually is no, they would not. And the reason they would not is because there was no expectation of objectivity in terms of reading history in the Roman world. That concept did not exist. The Romans and the Greeks before

them read histories for other reasons, not to learn objective facts, so to speak, but rather to be entertained. They read history books for fun, the way we sort of might read a historical novel, for example. And they also read histories because a lot of times authors would try to convey a moral, right? There would be a moral to the story. So first of all, the idea that the Romans would have objected because this wasn't true, well, actually, that's not a reason. Some people might wonder, well, wait a minute, wouldn't the Romans have objected to Josephus fabricating an ending to the story that makes the Jews look heroic and noble by preferring to die at their own hand than, you know, surrender to the Romans and become enslaved? So kind of makes

the Jews look really good in a way. Wouldn't the Romans have objected to that? And the answer to that is no, they wouldn't have necessarily, because there is no glory in defeating a wimpy enemy. Your own victory is elevated if your enemy is strong and noble and heroic, right? Because then your victory becomes a much greater victory. And you can see that in the rhetoric of modern wars as well. So the Romans wouldn't necessarily have objected on those grounds either. So that's where some people then wonder, well, wait a minute, doesn't archaeology tell us, right? Doesn't archaeology tell us one way or the other whether the mass suicide occurred? And here is where archaeology, in my opinion, cannot help us. So one of the important things about studying the past, there are a couple

of important things. One is that I think we need to use all of the sources of information at our disposal. But on the other hand, we also have to realize the limitations of the different sources that we have. And different sources, whether it's archaeology or literary, give us different kinds of information. And in order to be able to understand the past, it's a matter of understanding what the limitations are and asking the right questions. And asking the question of whether the mass suicide occurred or not of the archaeology, that's not a question that archaeology is equipped to answer. And so I want to give a couple of examples. So for example, many people who visited the top of Masada might have been taken to a little room next to the large

bathhouse in the Northern Palace complex and told by their guide that this is where the lots were found. Because Yadin found a group of potsherds in that room, which had inscriptions on them. And the inscriptions are Hebrew names, including the name Elazar Ben-Yair. And he identified them as the lots. What's the problem? The problem is, is that there were 12 pot sherds in that group, not 10. One of them clearly had never been finished, so Yadin said, okay, we can disregard that, but that left 11. Now, one of the pot sherds is inscribed Ben-Yair, and very interesting because Josephus says Eliezer Ben-Yair was the head of the Jewish rebels on top of Masada. Is it the same guy? Maybe it is. Yadin said, okay, this must be Eliezer Ben-Yair. We can disregard him as well.

And that's how he got to 10. It was a bit of fudging. But ultimately, those potsherds were published by another specialist who pointed out that we can't, in fact, conclude that they are lots. And the reason is we have a lot of inscribed potsherds with names on them that were found in context of the time of the revolt around the top of Masada that don't necessarily have anything to do with lots. They were used for various purposes like meal ration tickets. So are those the lots or not? Well, they could be, but they don't have to be. And the same thing

with another question, which is, okay, so Josefa says there were 967 Jewish rebels on top of Masada at the time of the siege. When Yadin excavated the top of the mountain, he did not find 967 skeletons, not even close. He found three skeletons, a man, woman, and child on the lowest terrace of the northern palace complex, which apparently were Jewish rebels based on the associated finds. He found another group of skeletons, not clear how many, somewhere between 5 to 25, in a cistern on the southeast side of the mountain, not clear how many, somewhere between 5 to 25, in a cistern on the southeast side of the mountain, not clear that they're Jewish. There were other finds mixed in in that cistern, which indicate that these skeletons could be Roman soldiers, they could even be Byzantine monks,

because there was a Byzantine monastery on top of Masada, so it's not clear. That's all. Yadin didn't find any other human remains on top of Masada. So how does that accord with Josephus' story, right? Well, what Yadin said was, well, okay, Yadin again, interpreting Josephus literally, there was a mass suicide. The Romans come up to the top. They find all these bodies lying around. And what did they do with them? Well, remember, the Romans left a garrison, camped on top of the mountain for at least

a couple of decades afterwards. They wouldn't have left rotting corpses lying around the top of the site. They would have disposed of them. So the corpses, according to Yadin then, would have been cleared away and either buried in a mass grave somewhere or cremated. Now let's imagine for a minute that there is no mass suicide, that the Romans come up, there's some fighting, some Jews are killed, others are led away by the Romans. Same thing. The Romans would have cleared away any bodies that were left lying around. So this is a case where, and there are other examples of this,

where archaeologists have taken remains on top of the mountain and attempted to use them to either prove or disprove Josephus' mass suicide story. And so all that I can say is, and this is where some readers I know are disappointed when they read my book because they want to know whether the mass suicide actually happened or not. And I can't answer that question, not based on the archaeology. The only way to answer that question depends on how you evaluate Josephus's reliability as an historian, how you understand Josephus. And that varies widely. Some scholars, again, understanding him very literally, as Yadin did, and others saying, basically, we can't trust anything that he says. And so basically, I don't think we know, but I also don't think that this is something that archaeology can ever answer. It's just not the kind of information that archaeology provides. story. Jodie, when we go to the whole Masada myth and Masada's legacy in more recent history,

how does this site, and I'm quoting from your book here, of reported mass suicide of a band of Jewish rebels who terrorized other Jews become a symbol for the modern state of Israel? Yeah, right. That's a really great question because it's sort of confounding in a way, isn't it? So first of all, of course, we do have the mass suicide story with Josephus, right? It all starts with that, because if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have anything. But building on that, what happens then is that when the Zionist movement becomes very active in the early 20th century, the early part of the 20th century, in what was then Palestine, of course. So as part of this attempt to reestablish the Jewish connection to their ancient land, you begin to have these activities where Jews would visit different parts of the country.

They would go on hikes and so on. And there was an Israeli archaeologist named Shemariahu Goodman, who already in the 1930s began to organize these treks up to the top of Masada with lots of these Jewish youth. And this continued through the 1930s, through the 40s, you know, into the 50s. All of this against the background of, of course, in the 1940s, from 1939 into the 1940s, World War II and the Holocaust, and then afterwards, the establishment of the State of Israel. So eventually what happens is that Masada becomes connected with the Zionist endeavor, so to speak, by way of this connection and this idea that this is especially true with the Holocaust and in the wake of the Holocaust, the idea that you do have episodes where Jews are heroic and fight to the death and don't go

peacefully like lambs into the gas chambers or something like that. And there are, in fact, there were at the time explicit comparisons between Masada and the Warsaw Ghetto, for example. So Masada, in a way, went hand in hand with the Zionist endeavor to both connect with the land, but also to create an image of the modern Jew as somebody who will actually stand and fight. And then you get Yadin coming along. And Yadin, of course, is this larger than life figure. He was, even when he was alive, a larger than life figure, an extremely charismatic person. And as I mentioned, he had at one point in his career, he was chief of staff of the Israeli army, but also he was an archaeologist.

And all of that then combines. And it's not a coincidence that he chooses to excavate the site of Masada from 1963 to 1965. And he really is probably the only person who could have mounted such an expedition at that time. The logistical challenges were enormous. And in the wake of his excavation, Yadin publishes a very popular book that was read widely and translated into many languages around the world. So it raises the profile of Masada yet

further. Masada becomes a national park in Israel. A cable car is built to take people to the top. And all of this then combines with this idea of Masada already being a kind of symbol of the state of Israel, and especially after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, physically Masada as this kind of isolated mountain surrounded by enemies on all sides, which is what you have with the Roman siege, it all comes together and Masada becomes this sort of symbol of the state of Israel. It ironically begins to come apart shortly afterwards. And this is largely, it's a result of several factors, but one factor is the 1973 war, the Yom Kippur War, which greatly undermined Israel's confidence in its own military

capabilities, right? And so this sort of Masada myth of the state of Israel that can hold out against the enemies on all sides. That was broken down in 1973. And then going into the 1980s, this happens already in the late 70s, but especially in the 80s, where the sort of Zionist ideal breaks down. This idea of Israel as this Zionist society, you begin to enter a period of what's called post-Zionism, at least for some modern Israelis, especially among the more intellectual or the elite. And so eventually all of this erodes. So, you know, it's funny in Israel today among, I won't say all Israelis, but among at least many Israelis and especially secular ones, Masada is not necessarily the symbol of the state,

at least not in the way that it used to be, but it certainly is among diaspora Jews. And you see that when you go to the top of the mountain and you see the groups there with their tour guides, it's still very much a potent symbol and not just among diaspora Jews, but even among the world in general. And I conclude the book by talking about some of the more modern episodes. I actually have this now yellowing newspaper clipping in my office pinned to the corkboard, which shows Bill and Hillary Clinton visiting Masada a couple of years after I conducted my excavations there. George Bush also visited the top. Trump wanted to visit the top of Masada when he made his historic 22-hour trip to Israel very early in his presidency.

So Masada really still, among diaspora Jews especially, but even in the eyes of the world, remains in many ways a symbol of the state of Israel, even if that image has somewhat eroded, let's say, in recent decades. Well, there you go. Peter O'Toole, the Clintons, Bush, remarkable. Jodie, this has been a fantastic chat. So many brilliant answers. Your book on this topic is called? It's called Masada from Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth. And it was published in 2019. And anybody who's interested, it's on Amazon. So you can find it there. It was published

by Princeton University Press. And it is aimed at a non-specialist audience. So it's not like a technical archaeological book. Fantastic. Jodie, thanks once again for coming on the show. Thank you.