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Visiting Solomon's Pools south of al-Khader and about 5 kilometres southwest of Bethlehem

2,805 views · Published 7 May 2012 · 3:45 · Indexed 13 October 2026

Channel: The Holy Land, by Zahi Shaked · 2012 · Travel & Events

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Zahi Shaked A tour guide in Israel and his camera
 [email protected] 972-54-6905522 tel    
סיור עם מורה הדרך ומדריך הטיולים צחי שקד 0546905522
he pools consist of three open cisterns, each rectilinear pool with a 6 metres (20 ft) drop to the next, fed from an underground spring. With each pool being over 100 metres (330 ft) long, 65 metres (213 ft) wide and 10 metres (33 ft) deep, the total water capacity is approximately 200,000,000 litres (53,000,000 USgal). Consequently the pools have played a significant role in the area's water supply for centuries.
They are erroneously named after the Biblical Solomon, stemming from a legend of Solomon using the waters and gardens as in Ecclesiastes 2.6, where Solomon is recorded as saying "I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees".[1] However, recent evidence suggests that the lowest pool was probably the constructed during the Maccabean period at the time of the reconstruction of the temple at Jerusalem (circa 2 BCE).
A second phase occurred when ancient Roman Pontius Pilate built 39 kilometres (24 mi) of aqueduct from the collection pools at Arrub. Roman engineering under Herod the Great in connection with his improvements to the Second Temple created the underground tunnel feeding the upper pool.[2]

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