Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

IRRIGATION

Unlike the “hydraulic civilizations” of Egypt and Mesopotamia, which were fortunate to have major rivers for agriculture, Israel was compelled to rely upon springs and rainwater to irrigate its crops. The earliest settlements in Israel, such as Jericho, practiced fixed-plot agriculture in water-retentive soil near springs. Where available, springs continued to be exploited in the Iron Age. In Jerusalem, e.g., the Siloam Channel led the waters of the Gihon Spring south along the Kidron Valley to reservoirs at the tip of the City of David. Openings at intervals on the eastern wall of the channel, which faced the valley, allowed water to be diverted to irrigate agricultural plots in the valley below.

Population increases necessitated movement into areas without springs, where rain was the primary source of water for agriculture. Since rainfall in Israel varies drastically, settlers had to develop systems of terraces, dams, and conduits to ensure that runoff reached agricultural plots. Terraces were formed by constructing dry-stone retaining walls along the contours of steep hillsides. The result was a series of stepped, level plots that impeded the flow of water downhill, allowing it to infiltrate the soil. Terraces at Ai and Raddana date to the Iron I period.

The most impressive irrigation techniques were employed in the Negeb and the desert fringes of Transjordan. Terrace wall systems built in the Chalcolithic period retained enough water to produce wheat and barley at Shiqmim, in the Naḥal Beersheba. Farther south, irrigation systems flourished at Oboda ({Avdat), Sobata (Isbeita/Shivta), Nessana ({Auja el-µafir), and other sites during the Israelite, Nabatean-Roman, and Byzantine periods. These systems included a series of walls across individual wadis, terraced fields with farmsteads known as “runoff farms,” and extensive diversion systems that channeled floodwaters of main wadis into broad terraced fields where sluice gates allowed overflow from one terrace to descend to the next lower one. Iron Age runoff farms have been found in the Buqeiʿa region in the northeastern part of the Judean desert. Irrigation systems have been discovered at Middle Bronze Jawa, in northeastern Jordan, and Nabatean Humayma, in southern Jordan.

References to water rights and a date palm plantation in the Nessana Papyri indicate that irrigation was employed in arid regions of southern Israel into the 7th century c.e. Desert farming reached its peak in the Byzantine and Ummayid periods and ceased at about the time that the Abassids moved the caliphate to Baghdad. Runoff farming in this area required the incentive programs of strong central governments and thrived in proportion to their invested interests in the frontier.

Bibliography. O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, 1987); R. J. Forbes, “Irrigation and Drainage,” in Studies in Ancient Technology, 3rd ed. (Leiden, 1993), 2:1-79; Ø. S. LaBianca, Sedentarization and Nomadization: Food System Cycles at Hesban and Vicinity in Transjordan (Berrien Springs, 1990); T. E. Levy, “How Ancient Man First Utilized the Rivers in the Desert,” BARev 16/6 (1990): 20-31; J. P. Oleson, “The Origins and Design of Nabataean Water-Supply Systems,” in Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan V, ed. K. ʿAmr, F. Zayadine, and M. Zaghloul (Amman, 1995), 707-19; L. E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” BASOR 260 (1985): 1-35; “Farming in the Judean Desert during the Iron Age,” BASOR 221 (1976): 145-58.

James H. Pace

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

IRRIGATION

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)