At En Gedi we walked to what we Canadians would call a small waterfall. David hid from Saul in the wilderness here, running for his life. We decided not to walk to the second waterfall, further back, as Terry's foot still needed no further stressing, and I didn't feel like clambering over the rocks at the fast pace of the young people.
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| Hyrax, the modern word for coney or badger in KJV |
A few more miles down the road and we were at Masada, a great fortress and palace complex built high on a cliff by Herod the Great in 73 AD. Swiftly we ascended to the top of the plateau by cable car. A thousand Jewish people had lived in the city at that time. We could see the ruins of Herod's palace, a synagogue, ritual baths, cisterns, and even a swimming pool, visible because of excavations, shown by a black line along the rock.
The Romans attacked with the use of a battering ram, as the sides of the cliff were so steep, and the Jews had poured oil down it. The Jewish people believed that " a glorious death is preferable to a life of infamy". They killed off each other, and the remaining person committed suicide. How do we know all these details? Two women and three children hid in a cistern, and lived to tell the tale.
Shmulik read us the touching story; it is such a significant event in the culture that Jewish youth are taught about the siege during their army training.
In 2001 Masada was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
After this sombre history lesson, we drove to the shore of the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth at 423 metres(1,388 feet) below sea level, where some of us floated in the densely salty water, over eight times more salty than the ocean. It was a warm enough day, but Terry contented himself with taking the pictures. On the shore, we slathered ourselves with black Dead Sea mud, then rinsed it off in sulfuric hot water in outdoor showers.
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| I should've been reading a book! |
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