Masada & Dead Sea, Israel

One of our day trips in Israel was to Masada and the Dead Sea.  This area, which is 1300 feet below sea level, is where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.  They have found about 870 scrolls in caves, and in one cave they found 500 manuscripts!  What was written on these scrolls?  Both biblical, and non-biblical writings, and it is amazing to think that they have been so well preserved for thousands of years.  We saw the caves along our drive-if you look to the right of Jordans' shoulder you can see two of them.

We stopped at a famous Israeli cosmetic company factory; the brand is AHAVA.  You can buy it stateside too!

AHAVA gets their minerals from the Dead Sea and surrounding areas; it is run by a local Kibbutz.  A kibbutz is a modest name for something very unique: a voluntary democratic community where people live and work together on a non-competitive basis.   Sadly, we learned that they are having to shut down this Kibbutz and move the factory because it is technically in the West Bank, and many people around the world have started to boycott the company because of this, which has really hurt them. 

We got to watch as they made their beauty creams and body lotions

...and try some out in their store

After a great moisturizing session we went to Masada.  

Masada was built by Herod the Great, who wanted it as a winter palace and a place to hide out if an ancient version of a zombie apocalypse ever happened.  It was was rediscovered by archaeologists after the 1967 war when 2,000 Jewish Archeologists volunteered their services without pay to be apart of its excavation.

We took the gondola up to the top to check out what was up there.

King Herod was a pretty evil man, but when it came to building his hideout, he had a cistern system built into the mountian with had small aqueducts that would fill up when the rain came.  His water storage capacity was 10 million gallons, which is like 15 olympic size swimming pools! 

King Herods' lookout

We walked around the flat top of the mountian

It's amazing how much of the original architecture is left

The remains of a Synagogue where fragments of Biblical scrolls were found

Masada was under siege by troops of the Roman Empire towards the end of the First Jewish-Roman War, and ended in the mass suicide of 960 people who were holding out in rebellion at the top of the mountain.  Looking from the top, you can see the Roman camps that were used to encircle the people at the top to make sure that they didn't sneak down the mountain. When the Jews were first put under siege they would mock the Romans by pouring water from containers off the edge of the cliff to show them that they had so much water they could waste it, while the Romans had to get theirs from a spring 12 miles away. The Romans realized it would take years for the Jews to come down the mountian so they build a massive ramp to the top with slave labor in just a couple of months.

        From Masada we went to the Dead Sea.  Because the salinity of the Dead Sea is 30 times that of regular seawater, no organisms can survive-hence the name "Dead Sea".

We mudded up, and went for it!  

  Floating was a piece of cake.  It's true you can easily read a newspaper while in the water and you can flip over on your stomach and do a plank pose pretty easily! Super fun and salty!

We had lots of fun checking out Masada and the Dead Sea.  Onto our next stop to Nazareth and Galilee.