Burns Lecture: Masada: Last stronghold of the Jewish resistance against Rome
2026 Burns Lectures: Archaeology of the Holy Land
Jodi Magness is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an archaeologist, she has participated in over twenty excavations in Israel and Greece. Magness has written numerous books, including Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades (2024); Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (2019); and The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (2002).
Masada: Last stronghold of the Jewish resistance against Rome
In the first century BCE, Herod the Great, who ruled Judea as client king on behalf of Rome, built a fortified palace atop the mountain of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea. 70 years after Herod's death, the First Jewish Revolt against Rome broke out and Jewish rebels occupied Masada. According to the ancient historian Flavius Josephus, at the end of the revolt the Romans besieged the mountain and the Jewish rebels committed mass suicide.
In this slide-illustrated lecture, we survey the history and archaeology of Masada, including the results of excavations in the Roman siege works that Professor Magness co-directed in 1995. Masada is the subject of Professor Magness’s book Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton University Press, 2019).
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