Cisterns of Mamshit
About
Nabataean settlers built the first cisterns at Mamshit in the mid-1st century CE, turning a stop on the Petra-to-Gaza incense route into a real town rather than just a caravan halt. After Trajan's annexation of Arabia in 106 CE the town grew quickly under Roman rule, and residents cut new cisterns and stone channels to keep pace, catching rainwater that ran off the surrounding hillsides through carefully graded conduits. Mamshit had no natural spring of its own, so every drop its people drank had to be caught, stored, and rationed through systems exactly like these. The Negev's caravan cities depended on this kind of engineered water harvesting far more than on any river or masonry aqueduct.
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.
Sources
Nearby
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