---
title: "Under Ramat Rachel, a Hasmonean Aqueduct That Outlived Every Kingdom It Served"
description: "A 300-metre stretch of Jerusalem’s Lower Aqueduct, found ahead of a housing project, is to become the entrance to the new neighbourhood"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-11T21:03:03Z
modified: 2026-10-12T05:54:52Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/under-ramat-rachel-a-hasmonean-aqueduct-that-outlived-every--7e8933
language: en
tags: ["archaeology", "engineering", "history", "water", "judaism", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Under Ramat Rachel, a Hasmonean Aqueduct That Outlived Every Kingdom It Served

*A 300-metre stretch of Jerusalem’s Lower Aqueduct, found ahead of a housing project, is to become the entrance to the new neighbourhood*

By Jan Sokol · October 11, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/under-ramat-rachel-a-hasmonean-aqueduct-that-outlived-every--7e8933

## In brief

- The Israel Antiquities Authority exposed about 300 metres of Jerusalem’s Lower Aqueduct near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel
- The aqueduct ran by gravity from Solomon’s Pools, dropping about 1 metre per kilometre; its length is given as 21 km or 26 km
- Archaeologists found many repaired holes where local farmers reportedly tapped the channel to steal water
- Ottoman pipes and other repairs show intermittent use until about 100 years ago; the exact dating remains unsettled
- The section will be preserved at the entrance of a new neighbourhood, and the IAA hopes for a park toward the Old City

South of Jerusalem, near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, there is land the state wants for houses. Before the houses go up, the archaeologists go in. That is how the Israel Antiquities Authority, digging on behalf of the Israel Land Authority, came to expose about 300 metres of a channel that once carried water to the Temple Mount. The channel was probably built under the Hasmonean kings, some 2,000 years ago, [Arkeonews reported](https://arkeonews.net/2000-year-old-engineering-marvel-built-to-supply-jerusalem-under-hasmonean-kings-unearthed/).

It had no pumps and no engines. The water moved by gravity alone.

This is the Lower Aqueduct. It starts at Solomon’s Pools, south of Bethlehem, which are fed by springs in Gush Etzion. The excavation directors put its length at about 21 kilometres. [Haaretz](https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/2026-10-11/ty-article-magazine/archaeologists-reveal-huge-stretch-of-ancient-aqueduct-into-jerusalem/000001a1-2a52-da9e-a1f9-7ff3168f0000), citing the archaeologists, gives 26 kilometres, the distance as the channel winds around the hills, and calls the new stretch the biggest yet found. The site lies about 5 kilometres south of the Temple Mount. According to Haaretz, it is exactly where surveys going back to the 1970s said the aqueduct should be.

## The arithmetic of a slope

The Hasmoneans governed Judea from the second century BCE into the first, [according to JNS](https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/2-000-year-old-hasmonean-aqueduct-section-uncovered-in-jerusalem). In those years Jerusalem grew into a major political and religious centre, and a city like that cannot live on the water within its walls. Its rulers had to fetch water from springs far beyond the city.

![A winding stone water channel crosses rocky hills dotted with trees toward a fortified hilltop town in a vintage engraving.](https://rews.cc/img/f5f96cff87098afd5ad91b9287be31a042ad0a59.webp)

The whole project depended on one number. Over most of its course the channel drops about one metre for every kilometre. Haaretz reports that from its source to its end it falls only 30 to 40 metres in all, which the excavation’s co-director, Dr. Benyamin Storchan, calls an extraordinary feat of ancient planning. With no pumps, a mistake in the gradient anywhere along the line could have halted the water everywhere. The builders also left access points along the route, so that workers could get into the channel and clear blockages.

> “an impressive engineering project, probably built in the time of the Hasmonean kings.”

That is how Storchan and his fellow director Gil Freid describe it. The third co-director, Rotem Cohen, dug with them. As Haaretz traces the route, the aqueduct passes Armon Hanatziv and runs through a tunnel carved beneath the Abu Tor promenade. It then crosses the Ben Hinnom valley, curves around Mount Zion and enters the Old City near the Dung Gate. Storchan says the pools at the start are “a misnomer” with no link to King Solomon. They apparently belong to the Hasmonean era too.

A reflection, and only that: chronicles remember dynasties for their wars and their quarrels over the throne. Few remember them for a gradient worked out across 20-odd kilometres of hills. Yet the gradient outlasted the dynasty by almost two thousand years.

![A wooden A-frame with a hanging plumb bob stands beside a stone water channel, with a broken rusty crown among nearby rubble.](https://rews.cc/img/1f7f8e0507b5e6fbbf5993d31e83827f583ed0a6.webp)

## Those who drilled holes

The stone records one more thing. Haaretz reports that the archaeologists found places where “local farmers poked holes into the pipeline to steal the water”. The holes had been repaired, “a lot of them.” Storchan’s view is plain: “This was an official governmental structure, whether Hasmonean or Byzantine or whatever.” According to Haaretz, armed guards patrolled the line to stop this kind of damage.

So the state’s water ran past fields that were not allowed to drink from it. Farmers drilled holes, and the authorities patched them, again and again, whoever ruled at the time. The struggle over water in these hills did not end with the aqueduct. It goes on today at [the West Bank’s springs](https://rews.cc/a/the-garden-of-eden-diverted-settlers-take-the-west-bank-s-sp-82e71a).

## Layers

In its first form the water ran in a channel lined with plaster to stop leaks. According to the Antiquities Authority’s account, about 500 years ago, under Ottoman rule, ceramic pipes were laid inside the old channel. The outer wall got fresh plaster, with small stones pressed into it before it dried. Haaretz, however, places a pebble-studded layer of plaster much earlier, in the Umayyad period. The two accounts differ, and the dating is still open.

The record of rulers goes on. Haaretz notes an Arabic inscription from the Mamluk period linked to a rebuilding of the aqueduct. The British thought about refitting it with long metal pipes, then gave up the idea, because straight pipes could not follow a channel that bends around every hill. Storchan and Freid say the system “was so well planned that it remained in intermittent use until about 100 years ago”. It went out of use when modern technology, electricity among it, offered something better.

![A cracked terracotta pipe lies exposed in a rubble-filled trench, surrounded by rough stone blocks in a vintage engraving style.](https://rews.cc/img/dccb8c15cbc8ab467dd3bdd5699f6a283229c45d.webp)

Putting a date on it is harder. Each repair was built on top of the one before. Pottery and coins could stay in circulation for decades, and the stone slabs that once covered the channel are gone. The team is peeling back the plaster layer by layer, but “plaster isn’t a date book.” Haaretz writes that neither the Lower nor the Upper aqueduct “has been securely dated”. The Lower one is probably the older, since the Upper is straighter and more sophisticated, yet the Lower stayed in use longer. One new detail: soil seems to have built up slowly against the back wall rather than being shovelled in, which suggests the original Hasmonean channel may have stood free. “We literally see a cross section of time in one element,” Storchan said.

## A gate for a neighbourhood

The section will not be removed. Under the building plans it will be kept, put on display and built into the main entrance of the new neighbourhood, [the Jerusalem Post reported](https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-911290). The Antiquities Authority hopes for a continuous park where people could walk beside the old channel from southern Jerusalem toward the Old City.

Dr. Amit Re’em, the authority’s Jerusalem District Archaeologist, called it “an engineering marvel.” “Even today, with all our modern technology, building such a system would require extensive planning and effort,” he said. “The thought that about 2,000 years ago they managed to bring water to Jerusalem this way is astonishing.”

The findings will be presented at the 19th New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region conference. After that, the new residents will walk home past a dry channel. Hasmoneans, Umayyads, Mamluks and Ottomans all kept it running, patching the farmers’ holes as they went, until electricity made it obsolete.