{"id":4520,"date":"2014-02-23T06:59:50","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T06:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4520"},"modified":"2014-02-23T06:59:50","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T06:59:50","slug":"a-visit-to-king-herods-palace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4520","title":{"rendered":"A visit to King Herod\u2019s palace"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This<\/a>
This Wiki image gives you some idea of how spectacular it is.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Masada is a place of legend \u2013 and a place I had always wanted to visit \u2013 and on my recent trip to Israel, I did.<\/p>\n

It was spectacular in so many ways \u2013 it\u2019s really hard to know where to start. There\u2019s history and geology and tragedy and Peter O\u2019Toole\u2026<\/p>\n

I guess it starts with this amazing free standing rock plateau on the edge of the Judean Desert \u2013 overlooking the Dead Sea.<\/p>\n

It looks high \u2013 but in some ways it\u2019s not\u2026 the top is just 33 meters above sea level \u2026 of course the base is more than 200 meters BELOW sea level\u2026 (the Dead Sea is just a stone\u2019s throw away).<\/p>\n

It was the obvious place to build a fortress \u2013 but it has been captured more than once \u2013 so was probably not as good a fortress as it might initially seem.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The cable car is certainly easier than taking the walking track – but neither are for the faint hearted<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

King Herod the Great built palaces there, to host great feasts and, if the tour guides are to be believed, occasionally push an enemy off the top.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The ruins give just a hint of how magnificent it must have been in Herod’s day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Some<\/a>
Some of Herod’s d\u00e9cor has survived – thanks to the dry air here<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some years after Herod, Jewish rebels fleeing their Roman overlords set up on the mountaintop. The battle to remove them is the stuff of legends. The Roman governor Lucius Flavius Silva took the tenth legion to Masada to remove the Jews. It wasn\u2019t that easy and took months, rather than the few days they predicted.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>
From the walls of the fortress, you can clearly see the remains of the Roman camps below. I wonder how the besieged fighters felt looking down day after day at their enemies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To get to the mountaintop, the Romans had to build a\u00a0massive\u00a0stone and dirt\u00a0ramp against the western wall \u2013 then make a huge siege tower which was pushed\/hauled up that ramp to breach the walls.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The remains of the ramp are still there – and that mound at the bottom is the burial place of some skeletons found in the ruins – believed to be the defenders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to history (or legend), when the Romans entered Masada \u2013 all the defenders and their families had committed suicide rather than become slaves to the Romans.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The legend was made into a film with Peter O’Toole – which strangely enough is used at the visitor centre to illustrate the ‘real’ history<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Archaeologists do dispute some of the \u2018facts\u2019 of the siege of Masada\u2026 but it adds a great atmosphere to the ruins. At one point our guide insisted we were standing at the very place where the last Jewish defender killed himself…<\/p>\n

Maybe\u2026 maybe not. But the ruins of Masada have a special poignancy \u2013 although coming back down of the mountain does bring one back to earth with a thud.<\/p>\n

\"maccas\"<\/a>
I wonder how the defenders would feel to see the golden arches at the base of their mountain fortress…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Masada is a place of legend \u2013 and a place I had always wanted to visit \u2013 and on my recent trip to Israel, I did. It was spectacular in so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-my-travels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1aU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}