Oh yes Sir @janton, King Herod built an entire self contained plumbing system up there at the fort with storage tanks and water cisterns.
It was of course all destroyed by the Romans after Herod's death and after the Romans conquered the Jews at Massada.
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Howdy tonight sir papilloncharity! I thought the Romans built their fort up there after they finally defeated the Jews? I'm not sure at all about the timelines. Most of my knowledge about Massada is from a movie I saw about it. lol. In that movie the Romans built a huge ramp up to the top.
Howdy this morning Sir @janton, no. the Romans never built a fort there. They built the ramp and used jewish prisoners to roll a huge tower up the ramp so that they could breach the walls of the fort in order to get to the rebels.
By the time that they got into the fort, the rebels had burnt everything down and all had committed suicide. Some say 900 plus committed suicide, but archeologists only found the bones of about 43 people.
According to Josephus, the great historian, the jews selected 10 men to kill everyone and the families laid down to await the killer blows, then after all were killed, the 10 men drew straws and the winner had to kill the other nine and then himself.
Scholars have argued about this over the years, but I prefer to stick to the version of Josephus, as he was known to be accurate and he lived the closest to the time instead of our modern know all scholars that are trying to impress everyone with their "knowledge"
Blessings!
Howdy sir papilloncharity! someone on here did a post about their visit to Massada and it was amazing. So the temple or whatever is there now was what was there when the Romans captured it? I wonder how long it took to make that huge ramp? I need to research that and do a series on it. It's a remarkable achievement.
I would trust Josephus too. I was wondering how they knew that the last ten drew straws?
A lot of research has been done on it Air @janton and you will have a great time looking into this amazing true story.
Blessings!
I agree. From what I remember the project to build that ramp was a great achievement in itself but that fact is overlooked because of the story of the Jewish rebels, which is also an amazing story. Thanks for being such a consistent commenter sir papilloncharity!
You are just, if not more consistent my friend.
The Maccabees will also make an amazing story sequence.
Blessings!