Mesada - The fort in the desert - Ein Gedi - TravBuddy

Its hot. I mean its really hot here. Its so hot that I'm pretty sure that your body doesnt need to expend any energy in keeping itself warm. Just being in this air does that for you.

This place is amazing. But its the kind of place where you need to let yourself go, let go of your own intellect and just really get into the story of the place. Otherwise its just a pile of rocks just like every other pile of rocks you've seen in every other country.

The Story is epic. Its the Thermopolae of the middle east. The greatest jewish military venture, which was in the end a failure (which I've been told is very jewish, not being a jew I cant really comment as to the accuracy of that). Its amazing that this huge fortress/palace was in the middle of the desert was built with no real big water source near. And yet they were able to tease the Romans (who were carrying their water in from far far away) by dumping buckets of water over their own heads for 3 years. Speaking of which, make sure to see the cistern on the southern end, you can walk down into it and its the only cool place on the mountain. Its like a huge room with steps leading down into it, and back in the day it would have been filled with water. The conservation of water these guys had was ingenious. They really knew what they were doing. Nothing was wasted, and yet they were still able to have flush toilets and full plumbing.

I would really recommend getting there to see the sunrise, I didnt, but everyone said that was pretty amazing. Even without that experience, the view is awesome. It really was a wonderful place to have a palace. Herod must have loved standing on his balcony surveying the lands. His bedroom was one which I would have loved to have. That was another way to let your mind get into the place. Imagine this Herod guy. He would have been the guy you wanted to party with. He had the cool houses, spared no expense and must have been a pretty cool dude. Aside from the slaying all the kids in that one episode of the bible.

Anyway, Its a hike, its work, but its awesome. Just imagine yourself being the last of your kind holding out against the largest army in the world and feel the power of the place. Thats what Masada is.

Mesada is the name of a fort located on a small mountain next to the dead sea. The actual height of the mountain is only 200 meters, but because it's next to the dead sea, it appears like almost 500 meters high.The mountain itself is around 16km south of En Gedi (where we spent the night and floated on the sea) and just north of Sedom mountain.

Mesada is a part of the Unesco World Heritage list since 2001, due to its important role in the history of Israel and humankind as it symbolizes the eternal human fight between slavery and subdued to freedom.

The story is an amazing story - Israel was occupied by the romans around the year 0 (the era of Jesus). In the year 66 AC there was a big rebellion in Israel against the Romans, and Mesada which was a Roman Fort was captured by a group of militant jews. In 70 AC Jerusalem was destroyed and the last of the jews fled to Mesada which became the last free area in Israel. Mesada represented to all the occupied jews in Israel the last stand for freedom.

The romans started a siege on Mesada. The number of people inside the fort were around 2000 people, including elder, children and women. Around the fort the Romans put a task force of 8000 soldiers who tried to break the walls and occupy the fort. The siege started around 73 AC and lasted a few months. In the end the Romans built a tower to help them break the walls of the fort and storm the fort. When the jews realised they are doomed (there were only 960 people left in the fort at that time), they decided to commit mass suicide and die as free people than to be conqured and die as slaves.

The story of that night is an amazing story. They wrote down the names of all the men on stones and then picked up 10 stones. Each men went and kill his family, then lay on the ground with their bodies hugged in his hand and wait for the selected men to come and kill him. After the 10 finished killing all the rest of the people, they did a loterry between themselves and picked up one person who killed the last 9 and then commited suicide. In that way all 960 people died in that night. Died free. When the Romans broke into the fort the next day they found all the bodies spread around the place, and they adored the bravery and willingness of the dead people to fight and die free.

The story of what happend was documented by a famous writer from that time that found 2 women and 5 kids who were hiding in the wells on the mountain and escaped the mass suicide.

Up until today the name Mesada in Israel symbols the fight for freedom and the willingness to never let down and never be occupied again by another country and live under other regime.

The place itself is a beautiful one, a desert mountain, with amazing archeological digs on top of it, including ancient synagoges, storage rooms, fort walls, mosaics on the walls and floor and more.

You can climb the mountain by walk, it takes something like 45 minutes through a trail called "the snake trail", but this is really not recommended in the middle of the day in the summer. The 2nd option is to use the cable car which takes only 3 minutes.

On the mountain itself it takes around 1 hour to troll around, see all the areas. It's very organized with support for many languages.

Recommended!