Hydrogeological insights in antiquity as indicated by Canaanite and Israelite water systems

Hazor, one of the largest fortified city during the Israelite (Iron-Age) period, encompasses a gigantic underground water system within its perimeter, supplying water to thousands of its inhabitants. It is considered as the ultimate example that Iron-Age engineers had mastered the concept of regional groundwater table. However, evaluating the hydrogeological conditions and the degree of success in finding water in Hazor and other contemporary cities, and thereby assess to what extent this concept was known at that time has seldom been done. Resurveying the water system of Hazor indicates that its water chamber was dug along a major strand of the Dead Sea Fault, a boundary between the Arabian and African (Sinai) plates. Hydrological simulations have shown that water ascends into the water chamber, utilizing this strand. Hazor's engineers initially planned to connect the city with the springs at the foot of the mound (tell) through a shaft and tunnel as has been done at other biblical cities, but adjusted their plan when groundwater was encountered within the mound perimeter. This accidental success as well as the failure to reach the aquifer in deep water wells dug in the contemporary cities of Lachish and Beer Sheba, imply limited hydrogeological understanding at the beginning of the first millennium B.C.E.