Israeli High Schoolers Help Uncover 2,700-Year-Old Water System
Students participating in the excavation. Image by Gili Stern/IAA
Israeli high school students helped the Israel Antiquities Authority excavate a 2,700-year-old water system, according to the Times of Israel.
The water system, 20 meters long and over 4 meters deep, was likely built after the Neo-Assyrian Empire invasion of Israel in 738 BC. The invasion brought more than just soldiers—it brought agricultural infrastructure, indicating a desire by the Assyrians to develop the land they had captured. On the walls of the water system, students discovered seven engravings of human figures, crosses, and vegetation.
The students spent a week working at the dig as part of the Education Ministry’s new Land of Israel and Archaeology studies program, choosing this track as part of their matriculation assessment.
“It is difficult not to be impressed by the sight of the immense underground reservoir quarried out so many years ago,” said Gilad Itach, director of the excavation for the IAA. “In antiquity, rainwater collection and storage was a fundamental necessity. With an annual rainfall of 500 mm, the region’s winter rains would easily have filled the huge reservoir.”
Contact Jesse Bernstein at [email protected] or on Twitter @__jbernstein
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
