Masada and the Dead Sea

While staying in Jerusalem in 1867, Mark Twain made a trip to the Jordan River, Jericho, and the Dead Sea -- to combat a growing "disposition to smoke and idle and talk" in the holy city, he said. Ten days ago, A. and I made a similar trip from Tel Aviv to fight a similar disposition that we noticed setting in there. Forgoing a visit to Jericho, which is now located in the West Bank, we substituted Masada instead. Although Masada was visited by an American missionary in 1842, members of an American naval expedition in 1848, and Charles Warren (the same one who discovered Warren's Shaft) in 1867, Mark Twain did not go and seems not to have been aware of it.

Masada is a fortress – the name means "stronghold" in Hebrew -- on a remote mountain plateau in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea. According to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, it was built by unspecified "ancient kings" or by "Jonathan the High Priest." Later King Herod expanded the fortress, adding lavish palaces, bathhouses, storerooms, and cisterns, apparently as a precaution against "a twofold danger: peril on the one hand from the Jewish people, lest they should depose him and restore their former dynasty to power; the greater and more serious from Cleopatra, queen of Egypt." During the Great Revolt of the Jews against the Romans, a band of Jewish rebels – nearly a thousand men, women, and children altogether – fled to Masada and took refuge there. It was the last rebel stronghold in Judea. In 73 or 74 C.E., an army of 8,000 Roman troops besieged the fortress and, within a few months, built a ramp that allowed them to breach its walls. With their defeat imminent, the leader of the Jewish rebels persuaded his followers to take their own lives rather than be killed or enslaved by the Romans. Only two women and five children, who survived by hiding in one of the cisterns, lived to tell the story. In the twentieth century, Masada became a symbol of Jewish resistance to oppression, and I have heard that the recruits of Israel's Armored Corps swear an oath at Masada that the fortress will not fall again.

Here is a photo of the Northern Palace at Masada, built by Herod on three rock terraces. In the distance you can see the Dead Sea.

Here are the remains of Masada's synagogue; it is one of the only synagogues dating from the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 70 C.E.

Herod's storerooms.

Remains of a Roman camp at the foot of the mountain.

Looking down at the ramp built by the Roman army.

Ruins...

... and breathtaking views.

Admission to Masada: 61 shekels. Freedom: priceless.

From Masada, it is a short trip to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, about 1,300 feet (400 meters) below sea level. In the Bible it is called Yam ha-Melah ("Sea of Salt"; Gen. 14:3; Num. 34:3; Josh. 15:2, etc.), Yam ha-Aravah ("Sea of the Aravah"; Deut. 3:17; Josh. 3:16; 12:3), and "eastern sea" (to distinguish it from the Mediterranean) (Ezek. 47:18; Joel 2:20). It is still known in Hebrew today as Yam ha-Melah (יָם הַמֶּלַח, "Sea of Salt"), though for months, I must confess, I thought it was Yam ha-Melech (יָם הַמלך, "Sea of the King"). In Biblical times, the eastern shore of the sea was divided between the tribe of Reuben and the Moabites, and the western shore was occupied by Judah (the tribe and the kingdom). In the Talmud, the Dead Sea is called Yammah shel Sedom, "the Sea of Sodom," and according to Rabbi Dimmi, "no one ever drowns in the Sea of Sodom" (Shab. 108b). It was considered the juridical boundary of the Land of Israel (TJ, Shev. 6:1, 36c). It was the Romans who gave it the name Dead Sea, so called because the waters are so salty that no fish or vegetation can live there. During the Jewish War (66–70/73 C.E.), Vespasian's ships pursued the Jews fleeing by way of the Dead Sea, and it is said that he ordered a bound man to be thrown into the sea to determine whether he would sink.

Here's what Mark Twain had to say about the Dead Sea when he visited in 1867, one hundred and forty-one years before us:

The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun around the Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a scorching, arid, repulsive solitude. A silence broods over the scene that is depressing to the spirits. It makes one think of funerals and death.

The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it has a pebbly bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores. It yields quantities of asphaltum; fragments of it lie all about its banks; this stuff gives the place something of an unpleasant smell.

The shore of the Dead Sea has become slightly more developed since Mark Twain's time. We were able to enjoy the hospitality of a spa, owned and operated by Kibbutz Ein Gedi, that included a restaurant and bathing facilities. That livened things up a bit. But for the most part, the Dead Sea remains scorching and desolate.

Mark Twain provided an amusing description of what it's like to swim in the Dead Sea.

All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results [because of the high salt content -W.Y.]: our bodies would feel as if they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the dreadful smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be blistered from head to foot and suffer miserably for days. We were disappointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another party of pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of them ever did complain of anything more than a slight pricking sensation in places where their skin was abraded, and then only for a short time. My face smarted for a couple of hours, but it was partly because I got it badly sunburned while I was bathing, and stayed in so long that it became plastered over with salt.

No, the water did not blister us; it did not cover us with a slimy ooze and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance; it was not very slimy; and I could not discover that we smelled really any worse than we have always smelled since we have been in Palestine. It was only a different kind of smell, but not conspicuous on that account, because we have a great deal of variety in that respect. We didn't smell, there on the Jordan, the same as we do in Jerusalem; and we don't smell in Jerusalem just as we did in Nazareth or Tiberias or Caesarea Philippi or any of those other ruinous ancient towns in Galilee. No, we change all the time, and generally for the worse. We do our own washing.

It was a funny bath. We could not sink. One could stretch himself at full length on his back, with his arms on his breast, and all of his body above a line drawn from the corner of his jaw past the middle of his side, the middle of his leg, and through his anklebone would remain out of water. He could lift his head clear out if he chose. No position can be retained long; you lose your balance and whirl over, first on your back and then on your face, and so on. You can lie comfortably on your back, with your head out and your legs out from your knees down, by steadying yourself with your hands. You can sit, with your knees drawn up to your chin and your arms clasped around them, but you are bound to turn over presently, because you are top-heavy in that position. You can stand up straight in water that is over your head, and from the middle of your breast upward you will not be wet. But you cannot remain so. The water will soon float your feet to the surface. You cannot swim on your back and make any progress of any consequence, because your feet stick away above the surface, and there is nothing to propel yourself with but your heels. If you swim on your face, you kick up the water like a sternwheel boat. You make no headway. A horse is so top-heavy that he can neither swim nor stand up in the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side at once. Some of us bathed for more than an hour and then came out coated with salt till we shone like icicles. We scrubbed it off with a coarse towel and rode off with a splendid brand-new smell, though it was one which was not any more disagreeable than those we have been for several weeks enjoying. It was the variegated villainy and novelty of it that charmed us. Salt crystals glitter in the sun about the shores of the lake. In places they coat the ground like a brilliant crust of ice.

We had a similar experience swimming in the Dead Sea.

And, like Mark Twain, I came out coated with salt.

A. tried the Dead Sea mud, which is said to have therapeutic and rejuvenating properties, but I declined.

The only thing missing from our Dead Sea excursion was a glimpse of Lot's wife. According to the Bible, Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt near the Dead Sea (Genesis 19:26), but we could not find her. Like Mark Twain, "we looked everywhere as we passed along, but never saw grain or crystal of Lot's wife. It was a great disappointment…. Her picturesque form no longer looms above the desert of the Dead Sea to remind the tourist of the doom that fell upon the lost cities."

We left for Masada and the Dead Sea at 7:30 in the morning, and -- marveling at how we could traverse such diverse landscapes and climates in so short a time -- we were back to smoking, idling, and talking in the lush and modern seaside city of Tel Aviv by 7:30 that evening.