Floor of the Roman bath's "hot room " once rested on 

 these squat pillars. 



A great surprise awaited us when we started digging near 

 the storerooms. As we went deeper, we came across a classic 

 Roman-style public bath, which turned out to be the largest 

 of its kind ever found in this part of the world, and definitely 

 the best preserved, with all its installations and lavish adorn- 

 ments. The walls of the hot, tepid and cold rooms were 

 covered with frescoes, and their floors beautifully tiled. Also 

 well preserved were the clay pipes for the circulation of hot 

 air, and the numerous squat pillars on which the floor of the 

 hot room rest. 



The western palace, the main palace of Herod, was the 

 largest structure on the rock. It was a royal residence com- 

 plete with throne room, reception room, service quarters, 

 and workshops, all very well laid out. Two large, multi- 

 colored mosaics were uncovered here. They are exquisitely 

 executed, and perhaps the finest ever found in Israel. Cer- 

 tainly, they are the most ancient. This palace, too, was 

 covered by a thick layer of ashes in which were found many 

 coins of the revolt bearing the inscription, For the freedom of 

 ^ion. Several small palaces were found near the main pal- 

 ace, obviously built for Herod's family. 



Northeast of this palace are the ruins of a small Christian 

 chapel erected by a group of monks in the fifth centurx'. 

 (They also built small cells in various places on Masada.) 

 The structure consists of a rectangular hall oriented toward 

 the east, with an inner apse. It had once been decorated 

 with handsome mosaic paving, most of it long since re- 

 moved. But we were lucky to find a beautiful mosaic still 

 intact in the adjoining room, the vestry. 



Our greatest and most important finds were in the cham- 

 bers of the fortress casemate wall which encircles the top of 

 Masada. The Zealots had used these chambers as living 

 quarters, and here we found large quantities of domestic 

 utensils, as well as items made of perishable materials such 



as mats, shoes, clothing. In some of the rooms we found a 

 small heap of embers in the corner, with remains of sandals, 

 clothing, mirrors; mute witness for the Josephus record; 

 "They quickly made one heap of all they possessed and set 

 it on fire." Several rooms contained collections of stone 

 balls which had been fired by the Roman catapults. These 

 chambers also yielded numerous bronze and silver coins, 

 including rare silver shekels of the revolt, some inscribed 

 Jerusalem the Holy — Shekel of Israel, and others inscribed Tear 

 Five, the last to be struck before the fall of the Temple. The 

 total number of coins found during the excavation is 4,000. 

 Among them are the equally rare silver half-shekels. This 

 constitutes the biggest corpus of Jewish and Roman coins of 

 the first half of the first century c.e. ever found in excavations. 

 From the Jewish point of view, the four most important 

 buildings we uncovered were a synagogue, two ritual baths 

 {mikveh) and a religious schoolroom, all added by the Zealots 

 to the Herodian buildings. They confirm that the Zeal- 

 ots were strict observers of the Jewish Law; for these three 

 institutions are the most important for a religious commu- 

 nity. The synagogue, abutting the northwestern wall, is a 

 rectangular hall with two rows of columns and mud benches 

 all around. It is oriented toward Jerusalem. This is not 

 only the earliest synagogue known, but the only one to sur- 

 vive from the time of the Second Temple. (The original 

 Herodian structure on this site was probably also a syna- 

 gogue.) Of the ritual baths, the first was found in a case- 

 made chamber in the southeastern section of the wall, and 

 the second in the courtyard of a large administrative build- 

 ing we uncovered just west of the storeroom complex. Both 

 are identical in plan and construction, each having three 

 basins or baths, one of which is supplied by rainwater as 

 required by religious law. These, too, are the only surviving 

 mikvehs from the period of the Second Temple. The school- 

 room {beth midrash) was one of the first important finds of 

 the excavation. It was located south of the western palace, 

 and consists of a long hall, with benches on three sides and 

 one in the center. 



Fragment of ancient T' ,V****" 



document was one ^ '•'C^ 

 of the most impor- "- --^?^- 

 tant finds. 



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