Tamid Photo Essay in Lego® #8

The Shot

A Little Cranky in the Morning

The Kiyor is raised out of the ground upon the steps of the Ulam.

The Story

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The Kohanim would wash their hands and feet with water before beginning the avodah. Water for this purpose was stored in the Kiyor, a large copper vessel that was fitted with twelve spigots for multiple Kohanim to use at the same time. It was a sanctified vessel, and if water would remain inside the Kiyor overnight it would become unfit for use in the Beis Hamikdash. This would have required the Kohanim to empty the Kiyor each night and refill it the next day, which is both degrading to the sanctified water of the Kiyor and a time-consuming task. 

To avoid this, they took advantage of the fact that if the water in the Kiyor were to be connected to a source of flowing water its sanctity would be nullified and thus would not become unfit for use if left out overnight. To this end they dug a pit in the floor of the Azarah and directed a stream of water through it. The Kiyor was lowered into this pit each night where it remained submerged in, and thus connected to, the flowing water. 

A Kohen Gadol named Ben Katin, who lived during the Second Beis Hamikdash era, built a device called a Muchni [comparable to the English word machine] that was used to raise and lower the Kiyor out of the pit of water each day. Although not described in detail, we do know that it was a free-standing structure, made of wood, and consisted of a rope and pulley system with a ratchet or gear purposely designed to generate a lot of noise as it operated. The Muchni allowed the Kiyor to be raised by just one person, quite a feat of engineering considering that the Kiyor, when full of water, weighed over 2½ tons! 

The Setup

This shot is modeled and rendered in Bricklink Studio with overlay added in Photoshop (read more about this process in my introduction). I also added the black string in post-production (is there a way to do that in Studio?). I am not an engineer, but in my version of the Muchni I have a heavy counterweight on the back to balance out the weight of the Kiyor, and a system of gears (more complicated than I show in this model) would help move the counterweight a small distance up or down while the Kiyor covers a greater vertical distance. The curtain of the Ulam in the background is made of purple plates, studs inward, with yellow minifig hands used as decoration.

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