Masada (Hebrew: מְצָדָה məṣādā, 'fortress'; Arabic: جبل مسعدة)[1] is an ancient fortification in southern Israel, situated on top of an isolated rock plateau, akin to a mesa.

It is located on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea 20 km (12 miles) east of Arad.

[2][4] In modern times, the story of the siege was revived as the Masada myth, a selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus's account.

The fortress contained storehouses, barracks, an armory, a palace, and a series of cisterns (capacity around 40,000 cubic metres) that were refilled by rainwater - with the runoff collected from a single day's rain allegedly able to sustain over 1,000 people for 2 to 3 years.

[11] According to Josephus, between 37 and 31 BC, Herod the Great built a large fortress on the plateau as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt and erected two palaces with an endless food supply.

Josephus said that the Sicarii raided nearby Jewish villages including Ein Gedi, where they massacred 700 women and children.

[18] The Roman legion surrounded Masada, building a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau.

[11] According to Dan Gill,[19] geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m (375 ft) high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock.

The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16.

According to Josephus, when Roman troops entered the fortress, they discovered that its defenders had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and committed mass suicide or killed each other, 960 men, women, and children in total.

[25][26] Some of the other details that Josephus gives were correct – for instance, he describes the baths that were built there, the fact that the floors in some of the buildings 'were paved with stones of several colours', and that many pits were cut into the living rock to serve as cisterns.

[33] The Yoram Cave seeds were found to be fairly different from the wild variety, proof for an already advanced process of domestication, but very similar to the types of barley still cultivated in the region—an indication for remarkable constancy.

[31] Considering the difficulty in reaching the cave, whose mouth opens some 4 m above the exposed access path, the researchers have speculated that it was a place of short-term refuge for Chalcolithic people fleeing an unknown catastrophe.

Many of the ancient buildings have been restored from their remains, as have the wall paintings of Herod's two main palaces, and the Roman-style bathhouses that he built.

The Roman siege installations as a whole, especially the attack ramp, are the best preserved of their kind, and the reason for declaring Masada a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Inside the synagogue, an ostracon bearing the inscription ma'aser cohen (מעשר כוהן‎, tithe for the priest) was found, as were fragments of two scrolls: parts of Deuteronomy and of the Book of Ezekiel including the vision of the "dry bones" (Deuteronomy 33–34 and Ezekiel 35–38), found hidden in pits dug under the floor of a small room built inside the synagogue.

[37] Forensic analysis showed the hair had been shaved from the woman's head with a sharp instrument while she was still alive, a practice prescribed for captured women in the Bible (Deuteronomy 21:10–12) and the 2nd-century BCE Temple Scroll.

[37] Based on the evidence, anthropologist Joe Zias and forensic scientist Azriel Gorski believe the remains may have been Romans whom the rebels captured when they seized the garrison.

[37][38] As to the sparse remains of 24 people[dubious – discuss] found in the southern cave at the base of the cliff, excavator Yigael Yadin was unsure of their ethnicity.

In 2007, the Masada Museum in Memory of Yigael Yadin opened at the site, in which archeological findings are displayed in a theatrical setting.

There are two hiking paths, both very steep: Hikers frequently start an hour before sunrise, when the park opens, to avoid the mid-day heat, which can exceed 43 °C (109 °F) in the summer.

[45] In May 2015, 20-year old American tourist Briana McHam fell 25 feet on Masada's Snake Path, after she became separated from her Florida State University tour group and went off the marked trail.

The Northern Palace is one of Herod's more lavish palace-fortresses, and was built on the hilltop on the north side of Masada and continues two levels down, over the end of the cliffs.

The upper terrace of the Northern Palace included living quarters for the king and a semicircular portico to provide a view of the area.

The plan was to man defensive positions on Mount Carmel with Palmach fighters, to stop Erwin Rommel's expected drive through the region in 1942.

[53] These ceremonies are now also held at various other memorable locations, including the Armoured Corps Memorial at Latrun, the Western Wall and Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, Akko Prison, and training bases.