Negev Day 3: Dead Sea Day

Andrew Sharp
Impression Report
October 14, 2013

[Sorry this is so belated!  I fell way behind and am finally getting around to posting the rest of Andrew's thoughts from the semester.  More to come! ~Alana]

It was a strangely misty morning in Arad and on our first drive.

            First we went to Masada. While there we observed the long climb up and sent two of our more physically fit members to try and break the school record by making the climb in about two and a half minutes. (spoiler: they didn't make a new record or come super close either) While we were walking up the long route to get to the top we had to physically face the facts of Masada. Masada is a desert fortress mostly built by Herod the Great (or at least one can say that what remains are there are chiefly his) upon a large rock outcrop, shaped almost like a cylinder. Sheer cliffs surround the mountain that has a rather flat-ish top. An immensely fortifiable position, it would take hundreds of feet of ladder to scale it straight up on the side that is most easily accessed, and over a thousand on the opposite side. Thankfully for us hikers, but not so much for the Jewish rebels that held it against the Romans, there was an easier ascent via a huge siege ramp built for taking the fortress. In brief, the Romans, being as utterly organized, patient, and persistent as they were, took months and months to pile dirt up against the cliff face until they could get to the top. This is what makes the site accessible today.

            While at the top we looked at the remains of Herod's palaces and went into one of the giant cisterns. In order to live at this mountain top without fear that the enemy could just lay siege to it and wait for you to run out of food and water, there were huge cisterns dug. Large stone caves designed to store water. All of the cisterns combined inside the top of Masada, when full to capacity, could hold about 40,000 cubic meters of water. That's a lot of water. Not only this but vast stores of foods that weren't easily perishable, dried fruits and veggies, fish, oil, grain, and the like were kept as well. On top of that there was a barracks up top as well. Herod could have likely lived up top with a formidable fighting force, waiting out a siege for many years. A fascinating place.





            In the way of interesting old technology there was something that stood out. A bath house. Not a surprise in itself, but in the heated room, I found what was used to make the hot bath hot. Ingeniously, the whole floor of the room was raised on many tiny pillars, (not visible from inside) making something almost identical to a crawl space under our modern day houses in America. Only made of stone. And at the entrance of this crawl space was a short tunnel, in which a fire was placed and stoked, so that the heat, and smoke would travel into the crawl space, then up and out clay pipes placed opposite the fire, and along the walls of the room. This heated the floor, and the bath house. Ingenious.

            Next in the way of neat things was the remains of a columbarium. A pigeon coop! Or more properly called a Dovecote or Pigeoncote, it was a place to store/raise/house doves and pigeons. They were raised for food, eggs, and in hard times even their poop sold for a price as food in times of famine (See 2 Kings 6:25). An interesting alternative to a chicken coop indeed!

            After Masada we took the Gondola down and went to Ein Gedi. A freshwater spring where David likely spent a lot of his time when running from Saul. It was pretty, scenic, and nice to get a dip of cool water on a hot day.

            After we left Ein Gedi, we got covered in salt all over again by going down to the dead sea. The lowest water
source on planet earth I think. If you can call it a water source. The water has accumulated so much salt over the years that it's crystallizing under the surface of the water. It also made taking pictures with our water proof camera blurry. The water was warm, and we had to be sure to keep it from getting into our eyes. It also was super buoyant because of the salt. One would be hard pressed to drown in it, but because the physics of swimming is so far off due to the level of buoyancy it wouldn't be hard to panic and flail, get super salty water in your eyes, and sputter around a lot making yourself very uncomfortable, especially if you cut yourself on any of the salt formations under the water.

            Lastly we went to see the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The end.