The Wood at Masada—Where Did It Come From?

Where did the Romans get the wood to brace the main body of the stone-and-earth-filled assault ramp at Masada? A well-known study conducted by researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science began with the assumption that the Romans gathered the wood in the immediate area. The researchers analyzed the carbon and oxygen isotopic composition of the ramp’s timber remnants (which were primarily Tamarix jordanis) as well as the isotopic composition of modern samples of T. jordanis from the Masada region and from sites in the central Negev and the Judean foothills.¹ Comparing the ancient and modern samples, the Weizmann researchers concluded that the wood from the first-century ramp came from an environment that was more humid than what exists in the Judean desert today and proposed that the region experienced significant climate change over a period of two millennia.