Ancient Window of Masada

Ancient Window from Masada.
I captured this photo visiting Israel in Feb 2019.

Looking westward through a "window" from Masada, an ancient Roman fortification on top of an isolated rock plateau In southern Israel on the eastern edge of the Judean desert. Herod the Great built two palaces on the mountain between 37-31 BC. But in 66 AD, a group of Jewish rebels overcame the Roman garrison of Masada and took control of the fortress.  

In 73 AD the Roman government finally sent a legion of Roman soldiers (8,000-9,000 fighting soldiers) and Jewish prisoners of war (6,000-7,000) to Masada and laid siege to it. They used the slave labor to build a giant siege ramp of stone and rubble.  At the bottom left corner of the window is the beginning of the siege ramp.  

If we could rewind time to the spring of 73 AD we would be seeing the countryside sprawling with tents and command posts for the nearly 15,000 soldiers and slaves.  If you leaned forward and looked down from the window, you would see the slaves carrying and pouring rock as they gradually built the siege ramp higher and higher. After three months of laying siege, on April 16th, the Romans pushed a large battering ram up the ramp and breached the wall of the fortress. According to the Jewish historian, 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.  Only two women and five children were found alive."

The eastern view of Masada.
Tourists can ascend by cable car or on foot.