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Description
This photograph shows the synagogue within the fortress of Masada, which is located in the Judaean Desert (note the Dead Sea in the top right of the picture). At the end of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 70 CE, some of the rebels who were part of a group called the Zealots, fled Jerusalem to the mountaintop fortress of Masada. They either refurbished a previously-existing synagogue or turned a room into a synagogue, building benches along the walls and installing a small inner room to serve as a genizah (storage room for used or damaged scrolls). Two pits dug into the floor of the small room yielded two scrolls, one of Deuteronomy and one of Ezekiel. Fragments of other scrolls were found nearby. Some of the fragments appear to have been written in the same scribal tradition as texts found in the Qumran caves.