The Water System at Tel Be'er Sheva

The story

The ancient city on Tel Be'er Sheva had two water systems: a well outside the wall, and an internal reservoir intended for a time of siege. The internal reservoir was built in the Iron Age. A dam built on Nahal Hevron gathered the floodwaters, and a covered channel carried them to an underground reservoir hewn in chalk rock; the access to it from within the city was by a flight of stairs built inside a shaft. The system was in use until the end of the first century BCE. The excavations at the tel were carried out in the years 1969 to 1975 under the direction of Prof. Yohanan Aharoni, and from 1976 under the direction of Prof. Ze'ev Herzog of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. In 1990 a comprehensive reconstruction work was carried out at the tel and the site was opened to visitors as a national park, and in 2005 it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage list together with Megiddo and Hazor. Between April and October 2003 the Conservation Administration of the Israel Antiquities Authority carried out an engineering stabilization of the ceiling of the water pit in the system.

• Water and wells
• Archaeology
• UNESCO
• Beersheba