Introductory note

There are many obvious anomalies in the myth of Masada. Their origin goes back — for a great number of them — to the Israeli archaeologists and to the interpretation of the remains given by the former commander of the Haganah1, Yigael Yadin. A revered figure in Israel, he was nonetheless accused of having interpreted his discoveries so that they would fit the myth of Masada developed by the educator and “moral entrepreneur” Shmaria Guttman. For the sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda, a nationalist and ideological motivation played a major role in his decision to undertake excavations at Masada. It was thought, he adds, that Israel needed myths to fashion a central process of nation- and state-building, to fashion identities and create cohesion by fostering a strong sense of a common past. Israel needed to promote the perception of itself as surrounded on all sides by enemies bent on its destruction. A new kind of Jew was needed, one ready to fight and die for his country. Yadin interpreted the events of Masada so that they would supply the required model. He played a formative role in the creation of Israel. For him, the excavations were a “patriotic matter” that justified lying and the concealment of truth in the service of political ends. An entire generation of Israeli Jews assimilated this falsifying myth, which solidified into a permanent ingredient of their identity as Israelis. To know the whole story in detail, the reader will have to obtain a copy of Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s book, Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada (Humanity Books, Amherst, New York, 2002). The text that follows is written by Nachman Ben-Yehuda on the basis of an earlier work, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel (Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

The expression “the myth of Masada” has become a near-commonplace for Israelis, and yet its exact meaning is not entirely clear. In this short article I will attempt to describe the nature of this myth, how it was created, and why.

The logical structure I will follow is this:

  1. I would like to familiarize us with the historical account of Masada that is not regarded as a “myth,” that is, the account of Flavius Josephus.
  2. Where and how do we learn things about the myth?
  3. What does this myth consist of?
  4. Why and when was the mythical account of Masada created?

The account of Masada as described by Flavius Josephus

Although the question of Josephus’s credibility has never been fully accepted or satisfactorily resolved, many scholars seem to accept it. There appear to be two schools of thought concerning the reading and interpretation of Josephus. One of these schools tends to over-interpret the text and to read it very freely. The other insists that one must read and interpret Josephus “as is,” that is, by staying as close as possible to the text itself, without allowing oneself any overly free interpretation.

What does Josephus say?

The account of Masada must be situated back within its context, within the historical period concerned, otherwise it means nothing. Masada was part of a much larger Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire, between 66 and 73. This revolt ended in disaster and bitter defeat for the Jews. Masada was merely the defeat that brought to an end the eradication of this revolt as a whole. There were various ideological groups of Jews during the time it lasted. Among them four important groups stand out. The two most significant groups are the Sicarii and above all the Zealots, who visibly bore the greatest weight of the revolt. Josephus clearly distinguishes these two groups. Throughout the book, the link between the Zealots and the Sicarii is not always very clear, but when Josephus discusses Masada, his use of the word “Sicarii” to describe the Jewish rebels is virtually constant.

Before the beginning of the revolt, Masada was conquered — probably by the Sicarii, commanded by Menahem, in 662. It is in fact this very act that symbolized and marked the beginning of the Great Jewish Revolt. In Jerusalem, the Sicarii were involved in so many terrorist activities against Jews and others that they were forced to leave the city some time before the beginning of the Roman siege. They fled to Masada. They remained there, led and commanded by Eleazar Ben-Yair (a “tyrant” in Josephus’s terminology), perhaps in the company of non-Sicarii who may have joined them, until the terrible end when most of them agreed to kill one another.

While the Sicarii were at Masada, it is clear that they attacked surrounding villages. The peak of these attacks was reached, for example, at Ein-Gedi:

“taking advantage of the night to escape the gaze of those who might have stood in their way, the Sicarii made an incursion against a small town called Engaddi. They scattered and drove out of the city those elements capable of defending themselves before they could even take up their arms and gather; those who were incapable of fleeing, the wretched women and children, they massacred, more than seven hundred persons in all.”3

After this, the Sicarii attackers carried off all the food reserves to Masada.

There are various versions of how long the siege of Masada lasted. Josephus does not discuss the question. In any case, it is evident that the siege did not begin immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem. The fortresses of Herodion and Machaerus were conquered first, then Lucilius Bassus (who had been sent as legate to Judaea) died and was replaced by Flavius Silva (who succeeded him as procurator of Judaea). Silva first gathered his forces, and only then did he launch the final assault on Masada. This whole process took time. Most scholars seem to accept that the siege and fall of Masada took only a few months — four, six, perhaps eight — probably from the winter of 72/73 until the following spring. In fact Roth’s study, impressive in its precision, establishes the following:

“All in all, the most probable duration of the siege of Masada is at most nine weeks, at minimum four, the most likely being seven weeks. To suppose a siege of about seven weeks accords with the date of the fall of the fortress given by Josephus, whatever calendar is used.”4

Such a conclusion is, moreover, confirmed by the recent geological attention to the fact that the massive siege ramp on the western side of Masada rests on an enormous natural spur. In this case, the Roman army did not have to build the great access ramp from the bottom of the mountain, but only to add the present ramp on top of the natural spur. This means that the construction of the ramp required far less effort than some had previously supposed5.

Whereas for the destruction of the siege of Jerusalem Josephus describes rather courageous attacks against the Romans by the Jewish defenders of the city, no such descriptions are available for the siege of Masada. This omission is significant insofar as, after the fall of Jerusalem, the Roman army conquered three other fortresses.

One was Herodion, which fell fairly quickly. Another was Machaerus, where the Jews waged a courageous fight, including attacks against the Roman army. Moreover, Josephus had all the more interest in presenting the heroic struggle of the Jews in that it demonstrated how much more heroic still was the Roman army that had conquered them. The absence of any mention of active combat, resistance, or attacks by the defenders of Masada is not without significance. Thus, whereas the typical impression one takes away from the historian’s description of combats and battles is that there was a war around Jerusalem, none of this emerges from the Roman siege of Masada. In other words, there was in truth no “battle” in the vicinity of Masada. Here we must bear in mind that there are a great many historical examples of genuine “fights to the finish,” remarkable and heroic. For example: Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae; the final resistance at the Alamo; the determination of the American commander of the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne to “fight to the end” during the German counterattack in the Ardennes in 1944; the heroic resistance of the American Marines at Wake Island in 1941; the against-all-odds revolt of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto; and, in the Bible, the death of Samson together with his enemies. Thus, to use a purely Jewish analogy, when the Sicarii were faced with the choice to be made, they chose suicide rather than the fate of Samson. What Josephus has to say about the suicide is that, after the Romans entered Masada and discovered the dead bodies:

“they were seized with admiration before the nobility of their resolve and the contempt for death shown by so many men who carried it out without flinching.”6

It seems that the inflexible resolve, the courage of the Sicarii, and their act of collective suicide at Masada aroused much respect and admiration among the Romans and Flavius Josephus. One may suppose that this was indeed the case. But Josephus does not make the analytical leap from “respect” to “heroism.” Heroism was socially constructed. In reality, Josephus describes elsewhere the Sicarii killing one another as the “wretched men”7 they were. The disagreeable impression that emerges is that, at Masada, the Sicarii so expert in attacking neighboring villages were not really good fighters and that they in fact avoided the occasions to fight.

Josephus specifies in particular that Eleazar Ben-Yair had to deliver two speeches to persuade his people to commit suicide. He even “quotes” these speeches in full. It emerges clearly from them that the Jewish rebels of Masada were at first rather reluctant to engage in a collective suicide. Josephus affirms that there were almost a thousand Sicarii atop Masada. These people were not warriors at all. They were women and children and perhaps still other non-combatants. It is not known how many actual fighters there were. Although Josephus does not establish the specific size of the Tenth Roman Legion that conducted the siege of Masada, one may suppose that it was composed of at least 6,000 soldiers (according to the estimate found in the literature). However, it may also have reached the figure of 10,000. It is essential to emphasize that there were seven survivors of the collective suicide. This is important because it is one of the surviving women who provided the details about the last night of the Sicarii at Masada.

Under these conditions, when one carefully examines the principal components of Josephus’s account of the Great Revolt and of Masada, one simply finds no portrait of heroism at Masada. The account conveys the history of a revolt doomed in advance (and problematic), of a majestic failure, of the destruction of the Second Temple and of Jerusalem, of large-scale massacres of Jews, of various factions of Jews fighting and murdering one another, of a collective suicide (an action not viewed favorably by the Jewish faith) committed by a group of terrorists and assassins whose fighting spirit may be called into question. Moreover, and from Josephus’s point of view, what was problematic regarding Masada in particular was not only the nature of the rebels present, but also their lack of fighting spirit. Josephus means by this that the Tenth Roman Legion arrived and laid siege to Masada. This siege did not last very long and was accompanied by no major battle. When the Romans succeeded in penetrating the fortress, they found seven survivors and what remained of the Jewish Sicarii (and perhaps also a few non-Sicarii) who had committed collective suicide. Such an act clearly aroused respect for these rebels among the Roman soldiers as well as in Josephus. From a Roman military point of view, the Masada campaign must have been an action of no great significance after a very important war in Judaea — a sort of mopping-up operation. It was something the Roman army had to do, but which involved nothing very special in terms of military strategy or effort. In fact Shatzman notes that the Roman siege of Masada was in no way exceptional8. Reading Josephus’s account immediately raises the question: how could so horrible and problematic a story have become so positive a symbol? In the end, in the context of Masada in particular and in the general context, heroism is neither evident nor understood as such.

How do we know the content of the mythical account of Masada?

Now that we are somewhat familiar with the historical account of Masada, the next question is that of how far Israelis are familiar with this account. To what extent does their knowledge of Masada approximate the actual historical account? More important still: how do we know what these Israelis (and others) know of it?

To answer these questions, I examined the various cultural manifestations of this account. In other words, the methodological question focused on the way in which cultures fashion and transmit knowledge to their members. In the case of Masada, it was not very difficult to answer this question. I scrutinized in depth every aspect of the culture likely to refer to Masada and examined the way in which the account of Masada was described there. This examination was both historical and multidirectional. It concerned both written sources (bulletins, books, leaflets, newspapers) and interviews. The cultural elements I sought to verify were the following: the seven principal youth movements (secular and religious) in Israel were examined; the use of Masada by the Jewish underground movements in Palestine before the creation of the State; the way Masada was used in the Israeli army; the way Masada is presented in school textbooks (elementary and secondary), in reference texts and encyclopedias; the way Masada is presented to tourists who visit the site, in tourist guides, the number of visitors to Masada, the development of Masada as a tourist site; the way Masada is presented in various art forms: children’s literature, adult fiction, poetry, theater, films, images, sculptures, science fiction. The examination of all these domains provides us with a very powerful analysis of the culture as regards the point to which the account of Flavius Josephus corresponds to the type of presentation that Israeli Jewish culture makes of Masada. This cultural analysis also shows the various ways in which Masada has been presented.

It will not be unduly surprising that the most obvious conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the way Masada is presented in the various cultural manifestations I examined does not correspond at all to the account of Flavius Josephus. When one compares the mythical account of Masada to that of Josephus, it diverges considerably from the historical account. The mythical account retains, more or less, three principal elements of Josephus’s account: the Jewish rebels who took part in the Great Revolt against the Roman Empire found themselves, at the end of the rebellion, at Masada; the Roman imperial army launched a siege on the mountain in order to conquer the place and capture the rebels; when the rebels realized that there was no longer any hope of winning or of holding out against the Roman army, they chose to kill themselves rather than surrender and become miserable slaves. One can find these details in almost every form of the mythical account, whether written or oral.

The omissions and the factually unsupported “information” added to the account of Masada

With the account presented in this way, it is indeed very easy to be impressed by the heroism of the rebels on the spur of Masada. But other no less important elements present in the historical account are regularly absent, all together, from the mythical account. Moreover, these omissions are often accompanied by imaginary “information” (and sometimes quite inventive, it must be admitted), supported by no fact whatsoever.

First, the fact that the events of Masada were the last act of a disastrous revolt against the Roman Empire, one that failed, is not borne out. The wisdom of this revolt and the problematic way in which it was organized and fought are generally not stated explicitly. To this omission must be added the frequency of the invention according to which the rebels of Masada arrived there after the destruction of Jerusalem. This point is significant insofar as it implies that these “poor heroes,” who fought so hard at Jerusalem, were barely able to escape the Roman army. However, insofar as they managed to do so, they chose to continue the fight elsewhere. The fact that the Sicarii of Masada were forced to leave Jerusalem by the other Jews, who had had enough of them and of their leader Menahem, is completely ignored. In reality, the Sicarii had to flee Jerusalem before the Roman army’s siege of the city. It was then that they found refuge atop Masada.

Second, the true identity and nature of the “rebels” of Masada is generally not revealed. As we have seen, they were Sicarii, and what Josephus says of them is not especially flattering. They were a group of robbers and assassins who killed and robbed other Jews. The words generally used to describe them, such as “defenders of Masada,” “fighters of Masada,” and most frequently “Zealots,” are deliberately misleading. From Josephus’s point of view, this last term is simply inaccurate.

Third, the attacks carried out by the Sicarii of Masada on the surrounding Jewish (?) villages, and their massacre of the inhabitants of Ein-Gedi, which testify to their nature as brutal assassins, robbers, or terrorists, are almost always ignored.

Fourth, the duration of the Roman siege of Masada, probably between a few weeks and perhaps four months, at least if one holds to Josephus, tends to be ignored. The siege is generally vaguely described as “long,” or as “having taken years,” or else as having lasted between one and two (more frequent) years.

Fifth, the fact that Josephus describes no battle around Masada is ignored. As is the supposition this implies, according to which the Sicarii may have been unenthusiastic about fighting the Roman army. In fact, many versions of the mythical account imply or state explicitly that those who fought the Tenth Roman Legion at Masada carried out attacks against its troops, its war machines, etc. An actual battle is thereby alluded to. A few particularly creative writers have suggested that Masada was the center of operations against the Romans. This is pure invention. That said, given that the archaeological excavations have failed to confirm in any way the existence of a battle, this scenario is more than likely a pure fabrication. However, while it is probable that there was fighting during the final stage of the siege, when the Romans were breaching the wall, there was before that moment no opposition on the part of the besieged “heroes” of Masada.

Sixth, attempts are made to “undo” the suicide, either by using expressions that ignore the exact nature of the action, such as “they died heroically,” “they chose death rather than slavery,” or by insisting on the fact that those who followed Ben-Yair killed one another and did not kill themselves, with the exception, of course, of the last one.

Seventh, the rebels’ hesitation to commit suicide and the fact that it took two speeches by Eleazar Ben-Yair to convince them of it are generally neglected. Either no speech is mentioned or else only one. This suits a heroic fable far better; after all, heroes do not hesitate.

Eighth, the seven survivors of whom Josephus speaks are rarely mentioned, and it is often insisted that all the inhabitants of Masada committed suicide. Generally the whole question of survivors is ignored, although “one survivor” (an “old lady”) or “no survivors” is sometimes mentioned. Once again, such an approach better suits the theme of heroism: heroes do not hide in basements, cowering for fear of dying.

In the end, the choices that remained to the rebels of Masada are generally presented as having been limited to two: surrender or death (that is, suicide). Other (glorious) possibilities are completely ignored: fighting to the finish (this is what Josippon suggests) or, according to Weiss-Rosmarin’s suggestion, concentrating one’s forces all at once to try to create a diversion, which would have allowed the flight of many people, including women and children. Another ignored possibility (though a less desirable one) is that of the rebels negotiating with the Romans (in fact such a negotiation did take place at Machaerus).

Omissions and additions are not the only methods used for the social construction of the mythical account. What is emphasized has also played an important role. For example, most of the sources that propagate the myth of Masada present the image of a small group of rebels against an enormous Roman army. Figures are sometimes even produced: 967 rebels against thousands (10,000-15,000) of Roman soldiers. These figures are no doubt accurate, but to insist upon them reinforces an element that is one of the hallmarks of modern Israeli Jewish identity — the struggle “of the few against the many.”

If I wanted to synthesize and reconstruct the mythical account of Masada into an ideal type, with what it retains of the facts as they happened, its omissions, and its additions, here is what it would look like:

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Zealots who remained fled to Masada. The Romans laid siege to Masada. The Zealots fought courageously and attacked the Roman positions for three years (thus Masada served as a center of rebellion against the Romans for three years). However, when they realized that there was no longer any hope of winning and that the choice was death or the misery of slavery, they all chose to kill themselves.

Thus, by preserving certain elements, by systematically ignoring the most problematic aspects, and by adding free interpretations and inventions, the heroic myth of Masada was forged. The combined effect of the aforementioned omissions, additions, and selective emphases is the creation of a heroic fable. Moreover, this heroic fable is generally recounted on the site itself, in the presence of the ancient ruins. It is recounted within the framework of an oath-taking ceremony (in the army), of a long and arduous march in the Judaean desert, or of some other educational activity. Such a method, which consists in combining the experience of an actual visit to Masada with a logically constructed heroic fable, has helped bring about the suspension of doubt and the transmission of the mythical account of Masada.

When and why was the mythical account of Masada created?

It is not very difficult to establish the fact that the mythical account of Masada was created by secular Zionism. Religious Jews, Zionist or not, for the most part did not take part in the creation of the myth. A great many of them fiercely opposed this myth.

It is clear that the mythical account of Masada began to be forged at the turn of the century. It received strong promotion in the 1920s. Before that time, Masada as a heroic fable was used within the framework of a debate between two secular Zionist ideological leaders (Ahad Ha’am and Berdichevsky). In 1923, Dr. Simchoni’s excellent translation of Josephus appeared. In 1927, Y. Lamdan published his poem “Masada,” which became so popular. Moreover, the two secular Zionists who contributed in a central and powerful way to promoting Masada as a heroic fable, Shmaria Guttman and Professor Yoseph Klausner, were at work in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

It is clear that the consolidating Zionist movement was desperately seeking Jewish heroic fables. It needed these fables for a number of reasons: to counter the poisoned European antisemitic image of the non-heroic Jew; to create a new secular Jewish consciousness and identity; to establish a strong and incontestable link between the Jews and Palestine (at the time) and Israel (later). The need for such a link sharpened in the early 1940s when the threat of an invasion of Palestine was imminent (by Rommel’s Afrika Korps). These years saw the crystallization of the mythical account of Masada in its most powerful form. There is no doubt that the creation of the mythical account was justified from a functional point of view, insofar as it helped a great many members of the Yishuv face some truly immense historical challenges. Thus the mythical account of Masada became a major and important ingredient in the constitution of the national and individual identity of the new secular and Zionist Jew: proud, rooted in his country and his will, and therefore capable of fighting for that country, to the end if need be. In plain terms: the mythical account of Masada had a strong effect on the generations it most influenced (including that of the author). Such an identitarian connection is the very element that explains the negative emotional reaction that one triggers when one attaches the word “Masada” to the word “myth,” thereby implying the idea of a falsehood.

The archaeological excavations of the early 1960s conducted by Professor Yigael Yadin helped to solidify the myth. However, after the Six-Day War (1967), the opening of new sites as well as certain profound changes in Israeli society — all of this inaugurated a process in which, since the late 1960s, Masada has lost its sacred place in the secular Zionist heroic pantheon. Fundamentally, Masada has gone from a heroic sanctuary and sacred place of pilgrimage to a tourist attraction.

Nowadays, the overwhelming majority of visitors to Masada are not Israeli.

Translation by Martine Leibovici

Notes

  1. The Haganah was the Jewish paramilitary organization of what was at the time the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which would later become the nucleus of the Israel Defense Forces.↩︎

  2. Hannah Cotton, Yehonatan Preiss, “Who conquered Masada in 66 A.D. and who occupied it until it fell?”, Zion, 1990, 55:449-454 (in Hebrew).↩︎

  3. Flavius Josephus, La guerre des Juifs (The Jewish War), trans. P. Savinel, Paris, Minuit, 1991, p. 390. So as not to re-translate the English translating the Greek, we give this translation, but Nachman Ben-Yehuda specifies: “when I refer to Flavius Josephus, the text is The Complete Works of Josephus, by Josephus Flavius, translated into English by Wm. Whiston. I used the 1981 edition published by Kregel Publications (Grand Rapids, Michigan). I deliberately chose this edition for various reasons. The small group of scholars who specialize in Josephus use a system of referencing books and paragraphs that I decided not to adopt. First, most naive readers are unaware of this system (which is restricted to the specialists mentioned above), and using it for a publication intended for a broad public will produce confusion in the reader. This is why I preferred to use a readily available text and a mode of citation accessible to all. Second, to uncover the myth of Masada presupposes that we attempt to know what those who fabricated the myth knew at the time. This is why the question of which version of Josephus was used is central. The edition used here was the one possessed by the fabricators of the myth, along with Simchoni’s translation. The fact is that without Josephus we know very little. All our knowledge of the period is potentially based on Josephus’s writings. He is — fortunately or unfortunately — the principal, and in many respects the only, historical source. If Josephus had not written a history, there would be no Masada, no Sicarii, no revolt, etc. This is why I take Josephus’s version as a fundamental point of support, whatever its truth-value (unless, of course, someone comes forward with decisive arguments establishing why what he says, or parts of what he says, is false. It is certain that as a historical source Josephus’s account is problematic. But it is the only one we have, it is the only detailed truth we have about the Great Jewish Revolt and about Masada).” Here is the English text cited by Ben-Yehuda: “they came down by night, without being discovered… and overran a small city called Engaddi, in which expedition they prevented those citizens that could have stopped them, before they could arm themselves and fight them. They also dispersed them, and cast them out of the city. As for such that could not run away, being women and children, they slew of them above seven hundred.”↩︎

  4. Jonathan Roth, “The Length of the Siege of Masada,” Scripta Classica Israelica, 14:87-110, 1995, p. 109.↩︎

  5. Cf. Dan Gill, “A Natural Spur at Masada,” Nature, 364[#6438]: 569-570, 1993.↩︎

  6. Flavius Josephus, op. cit., p. 550. “Nor could they [the Romans] do other than wonder at the courage of their [the Sicarii] resolution, and at the immovable contempt of death which so great a number of them had shown, when they went through with such an action as that was.”↩︎

  7. “Miserable men indeed they were.”↩︎

  8. Israel Shatzman, “The Roman Siege on Masada,” pp. 105-120, in Gila Hurvitz (ed.), The Story of Masada: Discoveries from the Excavations, Jerusalem, Hebrew University; Antiquities Authority; the Society for Studying Eretz Israel and Its Antiquities, 1993 (in Hebrew).↩︎

← Previous article · Next article → Back to issue 18