The Judaean Desert

Sorry about taking so long to post, but it took forever to find wifi here in Eilat. Eilat is on the Red Sea and is one of Israel's resort towns (and despite what some of my classmates thought, Jewish not Palestinian).  We're using it as our home base for our trips into the Negev (which contains both the Judaean and Jordanian deserts).

On our way down we stopped at Qumran and Jericho. Qumran is where the dead sea scrolls were written and eventually hidden by a isolationist sect of Jews called the Essenes who were active from about 150 BC to the first Jewish revolt (68 AD). Based upon their beliefs, they seem like a cross between Trappists and Amish who had the misfortune of being in the way when the Romans were moving south to deal with our second site, Masada.  They hide their scrolls in caves, and we will see them when we are back in Jerusalem, so the rest of the story can wait.

Two of the caves where scrolls were found

One of the ritual baths with some of the settlement behind

Masada was built as Herod the Great's bolt-hole. If something went wrong, and the Jews revolted in large numbers, Herod wanted some place safe to stay while waiting for Rome to come save him, and being Herod, wanted to hide in style.  He built a very impressive palace-fortress complex on top of a mountain, and kept it well-stocked enough to hold out for years.

The lift/gondola/whatever up

After Herod, the Romans kept it stocked, but didn't keep a large enough garrison to hold it, so the Zealots took it in the first days of the revolt.  It was the site of last stand of the revolt.  It has a lot of meaning to Israelis as a symbol of resistance even when defeat is inevitable, but what struck me was the sheer scale of the Roman siege works around the site, which are very well preserved because of the desert climate.

The Roman fortifications around the mountain

More Romans, but of a different type

Tomorrow we are off to see Petra if the border crossing goes well, and then back to Jerusalem via the Dead Sea.