Solomon's Pools

Solomon's Pools (Arabic: برك سليمان‎‎, Burak Suleīmān, Solomon's Pools, or simply el-Burak, the pools; Hebrew: בריכות שלמה‎‎, Breichot Shlomo) are three ancient reservoirs located in the south-central West Bank, immediately to the south of the Palestinian village of al-Khader, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) southwest of Bethlehem and near the road to Hebron.

The three large reservoirs, following each other in line, stand several dozen meters apart, each pool with a roughly 6 metres (20 ft) drop to the next. They are rectangular or trapezoidal in shape, partly hewn into the bedrock and partly built, between 118 and 179 metres (387–587 ft) long and 8 to 16 metres (26–52 ft) deep, with a total capacity of well over a quarter of a million cubic metres (some 290,000 m³ or 75 million US gallons).

The pools were part of a complex ancient water system, initially built between sometime around 100 BCE and ca. 30 CE. At its high point the system was providing water to the city and Jewish Temple of Jerusalem, as well as to the desert fortress and town of Herodium. At that time the pools were fed by two aqueducts, by several springs of the surrounding countryside including one situated underneath the lower pool, as well as by rainwater that descended from the overlooking hills. The pools acted as a storage and distribution facility, with the two feeder aqueducts bringing water to the pools from hills to the south. The collected water was then distributed by two other aqueducts leading from the pools northwards to Jerusalem, plus another one heading eastwards to the Herodium. Traces of all five initial aqueducts have been found.

Below the middle pool are the remains of the British pump station that took the water by pipe to the Old City of Jerusalem. Another, more recent pumping station below the lower pool is still providing water to the town of Bethlehem.

...
Wikipedia