Israel Day 10: Masada, The Dead Sea, En Gedi, and Qumran

Here is my impression report from the last day of our trip to the southern part of Israel.

I was unsure of what to expect from Masada. I didn’t really know anything about it, but I had heard the name some both in the required map work for this course as well as in reference to a tough hike. One of the t-shirts I’ve seen for sale all over the place is “I climbed Masada,” or some variation of that. This intimidated me, or at least it did until the wadi walk the day before. After that climb, I felt like I could handle anything thrown at me for this trip. Or, at least that’s how I felt until I saw the siege ramp we would be walking up. It was quite a bit bigger and steeper than I had expected. Thankfully, the path we took is on the side of the siege ramp and has steps built into it. This may be the first time I was actually thankful to see stairs in Israel because they meant that I didn’t have to scamper up that steep incline.

See the tiny white line on the left side of the giant mound of dirt? That's our path up to Masada. The giant mound of dirt is the original Roman siege ramp completed in 73AD

The hike up ended up being easier than I expected, although it was still immensely tiring. At the top, I was greeted with a fantastic view of the surrounding area, a beautiful antiquities site, and most importantly some shade and a bottle of Coke! I had questioned the wisdom of carrying up a bottle of coke with me, but I’m glad I did. It was a great way to celebrate my success. The first thing I really noticed about Masada was just how nice it is. Most of the antiquities sites we’ve visited up to this point don’t receive a lot of visitors and it’s mostly just a bunch of remains from archaeological digs. There’s typically been some work done to give us a better idea of what the site originally looked like, but this usually involves just adding a few courses of stones to the walls or repairing an arch that is falling down. Masada is different.
Me standing on the lower tier of Herod's Northern Palace at Masada. The pillars behind me are partly reconstruction. Originally they were solid marble.

There has been a lot more work put into it. There’s various models scattered around the site to help explain different areas of the site. There’s plenty of nicely shaded areas under which we could gather so that Dr. Rasmussen could explain things to us. I understand that this site is very important to many people, and it showed. While we were there, I saw at least one worship service going on, and I think I saw a Bar-Mitzvah starting up. It was just nice to visit an antiquities site that was so nice, and that you could access by other means besides walking up and down large hills or sets of stairs. The cable car ride down was most excellent!

An aerial view of the Snake Path leading down from Masada. The people in the picture are all from my group. I was riding comfortably in the cable car overhead...

After Masada, we got back on the bus to head off to an activity I had really been looking forward to: swimming in the Dead Sea. We were only given about 15-20 minutes to swim in it, but we were told this would be more than enough time. I was doubtful about this just because I love to swim. I had forgotten that Dr. Richter had described swimming in the Dead Sea as, “Swimming in Italian salad dressing.” She was not kidding. It was an incredibly bizarre feeling. And the density of the water made it so easy to float that I actually got tired of laying there after a few minutes. Not to mention that the high salt content found a couple of small cuts and scraps on my arms and legs I didn’t realize I had. It was a great experience though, and I’m glad we got the opportunity to try it out.

A group of us swimming at the dead sea. I'm the one with the floppy hat and the shirt. No sunburn here!

As awesome as this was, I couldn’t wait to get to En Gedi. Dr. Richter had told me it was one of her favorite places in Israel. En Gedi is an oasis in the middle of what is mostly desert. Granted, the Dead Sea is nearby, but its water is not potable. Walking along a dry dusty wadi and suddenly stumbling upon this oasis was amazing. We had been in the desert for several days at this point. Granted, we had experienced the water at En Avdad and the Dead Sea, but En Gedi was something else entirely. There were lush plants everywhere, and the number of birds singing was nothing short of incredible.

Some of the waterfalls cascading down near the entrance of En Gedi

The most amazing part to me were all of the waterfalls and pools of water that you could swim in. And this is all in the middle of the desert. I understand why David hid from Saul here. I’d be willing to make up people to hide from if it meant I could spend time there. If there is one location in Israel that I’d like to revisit, this is it. It was absolutely stunning.

Two of the waterfalls at En Gedi

The visit to Qumran was interesting and I enjoyed the video that explained a little bit about how the Essenes lived. The problem with the visit to this site was purely that my mind was still in En Gedi. I was struck by just how high up the caves the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in were. I expected them to be more on ground level. The hike from those caves down to the antiquities site seems pretty extreme. They were some tough guys!

Cave #4 where a lot of small pieces of scroll were found

The last thing that really left an impression on me is just how much like home JUC has become. My thought during the last part of the day was that I just wanted to get back home to JUC so I could rest and relax a bit.