7. The Ruins of the Masada
Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin oversaw excavations in the 1960s that uncovered Herod’s palaces, ritual baths, a funerary urn storage, storerooms that still had food traces, a synagogue, a chapel, and given how much time had passed since it was last used, some well-preserved remains. As things turned out, Herod did not need his hilltop desert fortress.
A century later, however, Masada became famous – or at the time, infamous – as the site of a last stand of ancient terrorists. In the modern era, the last stand at the Masada has been reinterpreted as a heroic symbol of defiance, and played and still plays a prominent role in Israeli national identity. At the end of their basic training, soldiers of the Israeli Armored Corps perform their swearing in at top of the hilltop fortresses’ ruins, in a ceremony that ends with the vow: “Masada shall not fall again“.
