Water Management in Ancient Civilizations

Water and its management is a necessity for every society and each individual. This book compiles ancient approaches to water management from different times, places, and perspectives. In antiquity, a great variety of techniques for how to store, deliver, and also lift water had evolved, especially during the Hellenistic and Roman times. This book examines the different governance structures, water management bodies, and relevant legislation that were developed to ensure that water was used and delivered in specific ways. These are explored utilizing examples from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Spain, and Italy. To prevent water from delivery problems, theft, and pollution, water was often conveyed via closed systems, which were sometimes subterranean in nature. Two respective closed system techniques are presented in this book: the Qanat-technology, with examples from the Iberian Peninsula, and the Roman Aqueduct, with an example from Sicily. Additionally, this book looks at how water has been used in societies as a way to display power, for leisure, to show technical hubris, or to simply harness its power, for example to document time passing, as was done via ancient water clocks. --- Within the Berlin Studies of the Ancient World series, monographs and volumes of all fields of ancient studies are published. These publications form the results of research conducted within the Excellence Cluster Topoi. The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations, a research association between the Freie Universität Berlin and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as well as the partner institutions Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The series is part of the research platform Edition Topoi and fully accessible at www.edition-topoi.org.