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
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
