Construction planning for a new residential neighborhood south of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, has uncovered something archaeologists describe as an engineering marvel: a 300-meter (roughly 1,000-foot) stretch of the Lower Aqueduct of Jerusalem, a 2,000-year-old water channel that once carried spring water from the hills south of Bethlehem all the way to the Temple Mount. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced the discovery on October 11. Excavation directors Benyamin Storchan, Gil Freid, and Rotem Cohen said the structure was “probably built in the time of the Hasmonean kings” — the Jewish dynasty that ruled Judea from roughly 140 to 37 BC — to supply water to Jerusalem’s growing population and its Temple complex. The aqueduct’s route stretched approximately 21 kilometers (13 miles) from Solomon’s Pools, a series of ancient reservoirs located south of Bethlehem in what is today the Gush Etzion area, to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It carried water Read More…

Archaeologists unearth the aqueduct that once fed the Temple Mount