 The Aramaic common noun "marda", "fortress", corresponds in meaning to the Greek name of another desert monastery of the time, Kastellion, and is used to describe that site in the "vita" (biography) of St Sabbas, but it is only used as a proper name for the monastery at Masada, as can be seen from the "vita" of St Euthymius.An almost inaccessible cave, dubbed Yoram Cave, located on the sheer southern cliff face 100 m below the plateau, has been found to contain numerous plant remains, of which 6,000-year-old barley seeds were in such good state of preservation that their genome could be sequenced.This is the first time that this succeeded with a Chalcolithic plant genome, which is also the oldest one sequenced so far.