ABSTRACT
Nothing is as crucial for a settled (or unsettled, for that matter) population as a supply of water. Hence, critical to the placement of any city in the ancient Near East was easy accessibility to water. During the Bronze Age, several sites in Israel — namely Jerusalem and Gezer — demonstrate remarkable engineering achievements to access water. Of the known water systems from the Bronze Age, the Gezer system, first discovered and cleared by R. A. S. Macalister, now ranks as one of the largest, if not the largest, and possibly oldest water system in the ancient Near East. The renewed excavation of the Tel Gezer Water System has opened some new prospects for looking at the advances in this type of engineering and the transference of this technology to other parts of the ancient world. 1
