PLACES IN ISRAEL THE PEOPLE AND THE LAND

Eve Harow The Biyar Aqueduct

n August 1995, the Dagan Hill, an carved horizontally through the moun- unoccupied strategic location within tain to empty into Solomon’s Pools. In the municipal boundaries of Efrat, the absence of electrical pumps, gravity Iwas the scene of a major two-week dictated the flow and the Dagan Hill was protest (with deep involvement by the too high to straddle and keep the water author of this article) against the Israeli flowing. government’s plan to relinquish it to the After a sojourn in the enormous catch- Palestinian Authority in nearby Bethle- ment basins (capacity 250,000 cu/ hem. During the mayhem, we uncovered meters) of Solomon’s Pools (not built by ancient man-made shafts in the ground King Solomon but perhaps inspired by and archaeologists were called in to The covered shaft on the Dagan him), the collected water took different investigate. directions. One section led east to the an aquiclude1 and then streaming all the The Biyar system was apparently ini- desert fortress-palace at Herodian; rem- water via its gradient. tiated by the Hasmoneans and exten- nants can still be seen on Efrat’s Eitam Hill. Another, the Upper Aqueduct, sively expanded by Herod the Great It was in use until 1967 (a 2000-year run!) apparently ended at Hezekiah’s Pool (37-4 BCE) as a solution to the growth maintained over many periods and aided in today’s Christian Quarter, to supply of Jerusalem’s population and the com- significantly by a pumping station built Herod’s Palace at Jaffa Gate, although mensurate need for more water, espe- under the British Mandate in 1924, still north of Kever Rachel in Bethlehem no cially during the festival pilgrimages visible near the Pina Chama at Tzomet remnants have yet been identified. The bringing many thousands to Jerusalem. Gush Etzion. It’s now a fun tourist attrac- Lower Aqueduct’s destination was no Local springs like the Gihon in Ir David tion where one can climb underground less than the Temple Mount, and we do and cisterns that caught winter rains no via one shaft, traverse the tunnel through have sections in a few areas including muddy waters and see how water still longer sufficed with the construction of the Sultan’s Pools in Jerusalem and on flows in, then climb up a ladder and out mikvaot, pools and bathhouses. In fact, Mount Zion. the Gemara (Ta’anit 19b) and Mishna another shaft further down the valley in (Shekalim 4) speak of the water short- between Efrat and Elazar, called appro- Fast forward to 2020: the Dagan Hill is age during the festivals and building the priately Nachal Pirim (Shafts Creek), home to a few hundred families, and the aqueduct as one of the uses for the half- with 40 shafts. The nearby Gush Etzion municipality is building a park integrat- shekel Temple tax. Winery has a line with the same name ing the aqueduct with bike paths and on the label. walkways. We still flow towards Jeru- The aqueduct is an incredible feat of salem, just now in traffic on the Tunnel The Arrub section is a hewn stone sur- engineering. They used very sophisti- Road. cated techniques for those times, includ- face aqueduct with dams and walls on ing measuring tools such as grommets, the mountain ridges, wending 40 kilo- metres (10 km as a crow flies) at a gra- siphons and the best technology Rome 1 A geological formation that absorbs and holds dient of less than 0.1%. Portions of it are water but does not transmit it at a sufficient could provide while combining different still visible today although much of it was rate to supply springs, wells, etc. collection methods. The Wadi al Biyar destroyed by negligence or dismantled section is springs sourced and used over the years for use as building mate- For a virtual tour of the Biyar, visit www. dams and shafts to channel water into rial. It was likely added after Herod’s eveharow.com under Chol Hamoed tour. an enlarged natural underground water reign. tunnel. This tunnel also gathered rain percolating through the limestone until The northern section was what was Eve Harow is a licensed tour guide, pod- hitting a nonporous marl layer, creating discovered in 1995, the deep tunnel caster and public speaker.

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