Back to Masada

An insightful summary of The Masada Excavation Reports, Volumes 1-8 Back to Masada brings Yigael Yadin's classic book on this desert palace/fortress up-to-date. Since Yadin's death in 1984, archaeologists have published eight hefty volumes of excavation reports that are now available to the many experts who contributed to this gorgeously illustrated new book. Cheek-by-jowl to Herod the Great's handsomely decorated palaces are the tattered remains of the Jewish defenders who, Josephus tells us, committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans legions. Did Yadin find the lots by which the Jewish rebels decided who would be the last to live? Or was Masada, as some have claimed, only a myth? See how Professor Amnon Ben-Tor of The Hebrew University masterfully undermines the argument that Masada is only a myth. Hundreds of thousands visit this site every year. Find out why. Amnon Ben-Tor, Yigael Yadin Professor Emeritus of the Archaeology of Eretz Israel at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, was a team member of the Yadin excavation of Masada from beginning to end. Ben-Tor studied archaeology and Jewish history at the Hebrew University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1968. From then and until 2004, he taught at the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology while excavating various sites in Israel, among them a regional study of the western Jezreel Valley at the sites of Tel Qiri, Tel Qashish and Yoqne'am. He has been the director of the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in memory of Yigael Yadin since 1990.