Masada

Masada is a fortress complex atop an isolated rock plateau rising about 400 metres above the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert, originally fortified by Herod the Great in the 1st century BCE as a refuge palace, with elaborate structures including a three-tiered northern palace built into the cliff face and sophisticated cistern systems that captured seasonal flood water. During the First Jewish-Roman War, Masada became the last holdout of Jewish rebels (the Sicarii) following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

According to the 1st-century historian Josephus — the only ancient source for the events, writing decades later with access to an unclear chain of testimony — when the Roman Tenth Legion completed a massive siege ramp and breached the fortress walls in 73 or 74 CE, the roughly 960 defenders chose to kill themselves and their families rather than be captured, drawing lots to select men who would kill the others before taking their own lives, since Jewish law prohibited suicide. Archaeological excavations from the 1960s onward, led by Yigael Yadin, found skeletal remains of around 28 individuals at the site (a number consistent with ordinary habitation rather than mass suicide on the scale Josephus describes) and ostraca (pottery shards) inscribed with names that some have linked to the lot-drawing account, though their interpretation remains debated. Regardless of the historical details, Masada became a powerful symbol of Jewish resistance in the 20th century, and Israeli soldiers in some units historically took their oath of enlistment at the site with the words "Masada shall not fall again."