Picture the scene: an 8,000-strong Roman army, equipped with shields, swords, catapults and arrows, marching towards a plateau in the middle of the Judaean Desert. Outnumbered, the 960 Jews living on top of the mountain have only rocks to defend themselves – but the advantage of elevation and a sophisticated food and water storage system. Who do you think won?

After capturing Jerusalem in AD 70, the Romans headed 52km south to Mount Masada, the site of the last Jewish resistance to the expanding Roman Empire. Once there, while under attack from the Jews above, the Romans built eight camps and a wall around the base of the 434m-high plateau, which rises from the desert like a Hasidic Jew’s fur shtreimel hat.

After surrounding the Jewish rebels, the Romans built a ramp from rocks and earth on the plateau’s western border – the most shallow side – which they supported with beams before constructing a siege tower and wheeling it up the ramp to destroy the Jews’ protective wall with a battering ram and fire.