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Cisterns of Avdat

CisternArabia · Avdat, IsraelBuilt 100 BCE

About

Nabataean traders carved and plastered rock-cut cisterns into the hillside at Avdat generations before Rome ever ruled the region, capturing the Negev's scarce winter rain to keep caravans supplied on the long haul between Petra and the Mediterranean port of Gaza. Rome annexed the Nabataean kingdom outright in 106 CE and folded Avdat into the new province of Arabia without tearing down the water system that already worked, so Roman soldiers stationed there simply kept drawing on the same cisterns their Nabataean predecessors had built. The site sits in a region that receives less than 150 millimeters of rain a year, which made every cistern the difference between a functioning waystation and an abandoned ruin. Incense and spice caravans still watered here on the road north through Arabia in the years after Trajan's death.

What happened here

Underground, vaulted, and much larger inside than anything visible above suggests. The walls are lined with waterproof mortar, the corners rounded so nothing can lodge, and the roof carried on rows of piers. Water arrives by aqueduct or off the roofs and is held against the dry months, for a fleet, a bath house, a fort or a whole town. Sediment settles in a trap before the main tank, and the tank is drained and scrubbed on a cycle by men who go down by ladder. Access is through shafts with stairs, and it is cool enough down there that things are stored in them. A town on a dry site lives or dies by its cisterns, and they are among the first things built.