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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
Ithe municipal boundaries of Efrat, the absence of electrical pumps, gravity
was 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
Palestinian Authority in nearby Bethle- After a sojourn in the enormous catch-
hem. During the mayhem, we uncovered ment basins (capacity 250,000 cu/
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 aquiclude and then streaming all the desert fortress-palace at Herodian; rem-
1
The Biyar system was apparently ini- water via its gradient.
tiated by the Hasmoneans and exten- nants can still be seen on Efrat’s Eitam
sively expanded by Herod the Great It was in use until 1967 (a 2000-year run!) Hill. Another, the Upper Aqueduct,
(37-4 BCE) as a solution to the growth maintained over many periods and aided apparently ended at Hezekiah’s Pool
of Jerusalem’s population and the com- significantly by a pumping station built in today’s Christian Quarter, to supply
mensurate need for more water, espe- under the British Mandate in 1924, still Herod’s Palace at Jaffa Gate, although
cially during the festival pilgrimages visible near the Pina Chama at Tzomet north of Kever Rachel in Bethlehem no
remnants have yet been identified. The
bringing many thousands to Jerusalem. Gush Etzion. It’s now a fun tourist attrac-
Local springs like the Gihon in Ir David tion where one can climb underground Lower Aqueduct’s destination was no
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
longer sufficed with the construction of muddy waters and see how water still the Sultan’s Pools in Jerusalem and on
mikvaot, pools and bathhouses. In fact, flows in, then climb up a ladder and out 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
engineering. They used very sophisti- The Arrub section is a hewn stone sur- 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-
siphons and the best technology Rome metres (10 km as a crow flies) at a gra- 1 A geological formation that absorbs and holds
could provide while combining different dient of less than 0.1%. Portions of it are water but does not transmit it at a sufficient rate
collection methods. The Wadi al Biyar still visible today although much of it was to supply springs, wells, etc.
section is springs sourced and used destroyed by negligence or dismantled For a virtual tour of the Biyar, visit www.
over the years for use as building mate-
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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