Siege of Gamla

Gamla, a Jewish town on a steep ridge in the Golan shaped like a camel's hump, was fortified by Josephus at the start of the revolt. In 67 Vespasian besieged it with three legions, the Fifth, Tenth and Fifteenth. The Romans breached the wall and poured into the town, but in its narrow, steep lanes the houses collapsed under them and they were driven out with heavy losses. Weeks later, on the 23rd of Hyperberetaios (October), soldiers of the Fifteenth Legion undermined a tower and Titus led the final assault. Josephus (War 4.1–83) writes that 4,000 were killed and 5,000 threw themselves into the ravine, and that only two women survived.

The site was identified in 1968 and excavated from 1976 by Shmarya Gutman and later Danny Syon. They found the breached wall, hundreds of arrowheads and ballista stones, coins struck in the town reading "for the redemption of Jerusalem the holy", and one of the oldest synagogues known, from the 1st century before the common count. Gamla, "the Masada of the north", is today a nature reserve.