Archaeology: Volunteers at Masada

Assembled in battle array below the great rock fortress of Masada, the 5,000 men of the Roman Tenth Legion begin their charge, superbly equipped and ready for the task ahead. Above them, behind the ramparts of the fort, 967 Jewish Zealots brace for a last desperate defense. The setting is not the western shore of the Dead Sea, where the outnumbered Zealots committed mass suicide in A.D. 73 rather than surrender to the Romans, but Manhattan’s Jewish Museum, where a panoramic display of exquisitely detailed models will open this week depicting the last days of Masada. The fact that visitors to the museum will see Masada as it was has been amply guaranteed by a 1st century historian and a remarkable contemporary archaeological expedition.

In his lengthy account of the battle of Masada, Historian Flavius Josephus described in meticulous detail the participants, the strategy, the topography and Masada’s elaborate buildings. Modern historians had little else to go on in their studies of Masada; because of its inaccessible location and difficult terrain, the fortress until recently had been only partially probed by archaeologists. Between 1963 and 1965, however, Masada was subjected to its second great siege—by diggers, not soldiers.

Two Pipes. Attracted by ads in the Israeli press and in the Observer of London, some 5,000 volunteers from 28 different countries traveled to Israel at their own expense over a two-year period to help professional archaeologists in a massive excavation of Masada. During the two-week stint allowed to each of the amateur archaeologists, they rose at 4:30 a.m. and worked ten-hour days in temperatures that ranged from below freezing to more than 90° F. The volunteers lived at the base of Masada in tents that were occasionally blown away by fierce desert winds, used open latrines, and got all of their water (cold) from two pipes that the Israelis had laid across the desert.

Aided by this raw manpower—which included a violin maker, elephant and horse trainers, models, doctors and a midwifery expert—the expedition leader, Israeli Archaeologist Yigael Yadin, was able to complete 97% of Masada’s excavation. Small portions of the fortress were left untouched to provide visitors with a before-and-after view of the site.

Israeli archaeologists are still studying the wealth of artifacts unearthed at Masada, but have already learned enough to establish that Josephus was indeed a worthy reporter. The dates on both Roman and Jewish coins help confirm when the Jewish revolt against Rome began (A.D. 66), and when the Zealots died. The three-tiered, mosaic-floored villa and ceremonial palace built by Herod and later occupied by the Zealots also conform closely to the descriptions of Josephus.

Ten by Lot. Archaeologist Yadin, who is also a former Israeli Army Chief of Staff, was even more impressed by the parchment scrolls unearthed by his expedition. A portion of a scroll identical with one of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments enabled researchers to trace the origin of both documents to the first half of the 1st century. Says Yadin: “It conclusively disproves the views of some scholars who hold that the Dead Sea Scrolls are either not genuine or date only from medieval times.”

Perhaps the most dramatic discovery was made by a group of volunteers who unearthed eleven small, mysterious potsherds. Each was inscribed in Hebrew with a different name, one of which was that of Eleazar Ben Ya’ir, the leader of the Zealots. “Could it be,” asks Yadin, “that we had discovered evidence associated with the death of the very last group of Masada’s defenders?” The answer, he feels, is suggested by Josephus’ description of the last moments of Masada: They then chose ten men by lot out of them, to slay all the rest . . . and when these ten had, without fear, slain them all, they made the same rule for casting lots for themselves, that he whose lot it was should first kill the other nine, and after all, should kill himself.

The potsherds, Yadin believes, could well have been used in the final casting of the lots by Ben Ya’ir and his ten commanders, just before the advance guard of the Tenth Legion breached Masada’s walls and found all of the defenders dead.