Nabatean Farms Reconstructed in the Desert

Two thousand years ago, canny Nabatean farmers grew productive crops on farms in the desert. They were able to do this by carefully harnessing the few inches of water that fell for a few hours each year on the barren hillsides, and that then flowed down to the otherwise dry watercourses in the valleys. These farms in the desert were once the breadbasket for tens of thousands of ancient settlers.

In the picture below we see the excellently preserved remains of a Nabatean farm at Shivta (ancient Sobata).

In the late 1950s the Desert Runoff Farms Unit, now a joint project of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, reconstructed two Nabatean farms, one at Shivta and the other at Avdat.

A team of scientists led by Professor Michael Evenari of Hebrew University recreated the farms on the very sites where the original farms were once planted. The reconstituted Nabatean farm at Shivta (below) retains the same layout and uses the same water distribution system as the original Nabatean farm.