It seems everywhere we go in this country, we run into Herod and his building projects. Wining and dining in Caeserea, impressing the Romans with the temple complex, and yesterday, we discovered, building a fort in the desert near the Dead Sea.
Two strange things happen beyond Jerusalem. If you’re heading South, as we were, the countryside changes: one minute it’s kind of green scrubland, full of olive trees, clustered villages and vineyards; the next, it’s desert. Suddenly, the scenery either side of the road was the hot, treeless, rolling rock of the sun-scorched land. The shadows fell across the rounded yellow dunes and banks - not sand, but hard rock, baked by the sun and virtually uninhabited. The change was remarkable.
“It’s like being in another country,” I said. Again.
The second thing that happens is that the road starts descending, very steeply, and carries on for a long time. Your ears and water bottles start popping, and no wonder: the end of that road, the Dead Sea, is 400m below sea level, and that country, beyond the Jericho road, takes you there quickly.
What do you picture when you think of the Dead Sea? I was taken with how blue it is. In its own way, it’s huge and beautiful, stretching, just like an ocean to the mountains of Jordan. We’d chosen a warm day to go to, just above 20 degrees, which made it all the nicer. For miles, we drove around its basin, following the road through the desert with barely a car the other way. I think, had we found somewhere, we’d have stopped to go in, but that of course had to be later. We had Herod to catch up with.
Masada is a hill-fortress, built on the top of a naturally formed flat-topped mountain in the desert. As we rumbled up in the cable car, and the shadow flicked over the gradually diminishing desert, we realised that there was virtually no way a fort like that could be penetrated. The salt flats spread for miles around, with no shade, no cover, and only the silent sea behind them. Anyone approaching would have been seen miles away.
I found Masada really interesting, but also quite evocative - it’s a preserved ruin now of course, but it still displays remarkable fragments of the past - sections of coloured floor tile in the bath house, the great storage pits for supplies, a watchtower, gates, the walls of palaces and houses, and Herod’s best-to-impress layouts. But at the end of its ancient story, once Rome had destroyed Jerusalem, Jewish rebels were forced to commit suicide at Masada, besieged by the Romans and clutching only a lifeless hope. It brought to an end the period of the time of the Jews in the land of Israel for almost 1,900 years, and started the great exile that would only end with the events of the Twentieth Century. From Masada onwards, the Jews had only hope that they’d one day return.
We decided to come back down in the cable car too. Looking back on the climbers, sweating their way with rucksacks under the afternoon sun, it was probably the right decision.
The sun had fallen behind the Israel-side mountains by the time we left Masada, giving the place a kind of cool air. There was still no breeze - even the Israel flag on top of had hung breathlessly by the watchtower. It was interesting to see the way the shadows fell across the craggy rocks as we headed back.
There was time though, for a stroll down to the sea itself. We pulled the car up, and walked down. It was just like a summer’s evening by that point - crisp light, warm shadows, the air still alive, and the sea gently shimmering with the last of the day. We had to remind ourselves that it was actually February.
The water foamed towards our feet - thick, sluggish waves; no tide, no rhythm, just rolling in forever. There was a line of perfectly-formed salt crystals at the water’s edge. I rubbed some of them into my hands. Paul cupped some water from the waves and washed his own hands in it. It was instantly sticky; greasy like moist fat. Apparently, it’s very good for you. I just wanted to wash my hands.
So that was the Dead Sea, the lifeless ocean at the bottom of the world. There’s a prophecy in Ezekiel that one day, fishermen will stand between Eglaim and En-Gedi casting nets into the water as it teems with life. That will take some doing: the only life there yesterday was the likes of us rubbing salt into our fingers.
Yet as lifeless as it was, there was a quiet beauty about the Dead Sea - a sort of silent stillness, first in the brilliant blue of the afternoon sky, and then in the wonderful light of the evening, when the last of the sun gently caught the chopping water and lit it silver with hope.
Nothing is beyond hope.
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