Lake Homs Dam

Largest Roman reservoir in the Middle East

The Lake of Homs is a Roman reservoir near the Syrian city of Homs, which is still in use.

The two- kilometer-long and seven meter high gravity dam consists of a Roman concrete core with a basalt stone cladding. The slightly tapered curvature of the dam is explained by the desire of the builders to take advantage of the course of a natural outcrop of basalt on the ground; the similarity to an arch dam is thus purely superficial, functionally the dam works on the principle of weight.

Contrary to an earlier assumption that brings the building in the context of the Egyptian New Kingdom, the lake until 284 AD by the Roman Emperor Diocletian ( 284-305 ) was applied for irrigation purposes. With a storage capacity of 90 million cubic meters, he is considered the largest reservoir built by the Romans in the Middle East and could even have been the largest ever built dam at the time of its completion.

Since a dam increase in 1938, the storage capacity of the artificial lake has risen to 200 million m³. Despite its long running time, the reservoir is silted only strikingly low.