The breaching point 14 – Above the Roman siege ramp the casemate wall is conspicuously missing where it was destroyed during the assault. In the Hebrew month of Nissan, in the spring of 73 CE, the Romans raised a tower high enough to overlook the cliff and the wall. During the siege, the area was bombarded by the Roman artillery launchers, as attested to by the ballistae and arrowheads discovered in the excavation. The rebels defended themselves by rolling down large stones on the Romans. But after the Romans destroyed the perimeter wall and burned the wood-and-earth wall the rebels had built to shore it up, the siege came to an end. From the reconstructed tower you can see the siege wall and the Roman camps at the base of Masada, among them camp 6, the camp of the Tenth Legion commander, Flavius Silva. The western Byzantine gate 15 – This gate of dressed stones stood at the upper end of the path that led over the ramp to the top of the mountain during the Byzantine era. It serves as an entrance to this day. To visit the cisterns, you can leave via the Byzantine gate, take the ramp trail westward for about 75 m, and near its starting point turn right on the signposted trail. The entire length of the trail from the gate to the cisterns is about 500 m. The “tanners’” tower 16 – In the portion of the casemate walls west of the Western Palace is a prominent tower, on whose ground floor an industrial installation was discovered that was once identified as a tanners’ workshop. Today it is believed to have been a laundry from the time of the rebels.
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