AQUEDUCT AT CAESAREA



Roman Aquedust


AQUEDUCT - a channel for transporting water from a remote source to a city. Israel's climate provides abundant rainfall in the winter months, but there is seldom any rain from May to October. This, along with the scarcity of good water supplies, made it necessary to build artificial storage areas to catch the winter rains. Elaborate systems of stone and masonry aqueducts and storage pools were sometimes constructed to bring water from the hill country to the cities and larger towns.

The best-known biblical accounts of the building of an aqueduct occur in 2 Kings 20:20 and in 2 Chronicals 32:30. King Hezekiah of Juda had a tunnel dug under the city of Jerusalem to bring water from the spring outside the city to Siloam reservoir inside the city wall. Across part of the course the workmen cut a tunnel through solid rock to complete the aqueduct. "Hezekiah's Tunnel" is still a major tourist attraction in Jerusalem.

"Solomon's Pools near Bethlehem are part of an ancient aqueduct system that brought water from the hills south of Jerusalem into the Temple area. During his adminstration, Pontius Pilate, Roman prefect of Judea, built an aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem. Some scholars suggest that the Tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4) that fell and killed eighteen people may have been part of that building project.





And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
2 Kings 20:20


This same Hezekiah also stopped up the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.
2 Chronicles 32:30


Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwell in Jerusalem?
Luke 13:4












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