Carmei Gat Mikveh Lifted Intact by IAA at Kiryat Gat

The Israel Antiquities Authority has lifted a roughly 2,000-year-old Second Temple–period Carmei Gat mikveh—about 25 tons and roughly 4 m wide—intact from the Carmei Gat neighborhood of Kiryat Gat, southern Israel. Excavation directors Elena Kogan-Zahavi, Maayan Margulis, and Shira Lifshitz say the ritual bath and associated stone measuring vessels mark the first known Jewish settlement at the seam between the Judean Lowlands and the northern Negev. Coverage of the move and announcement ran in the Jerusalem Post, Ynetnews, and Israel National News.

Conservators under senior lead Eyal Kaho spent about two weeks underpinning the plastered bath with steel beams, gauze, adhesives, and foam bracing before a roughly 300-ton-capacity crane and wide-load trailer carried it—with road closures and escorts—to temporary IAA National Treasures / Beit Guvrin storage. Salvage excavations ahead of neighborhood construction are funded by the Israel Lands Authority at about NIS 28 million across the project, press reports say. The mikveh is slated to return to an open public space in the new neighborhood once building finishes; no firm return date is public.

Directors link the settlement’s abandonment to the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the second century CE, with a different population reusing the site about 500 years later in the Byzantine period. Stone measuring vessels—objects that do not contract ritual impurity under Jewish law—reinforce the Second Temple Jewish reading. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu framed the find as a tangible window onto daily life in that settlement landscape.