So water was something incredibly important for any city or frankly speaking any kind of civilization. And it has a tendency to flow downhill, meaning that you really have to either raise it or find water springs. I know the Romans had aqueducts that needed to slope really gently and also needed to find springs really far away, since Rome was on a plain.
So the question here is 'were there efforts to create water pumps' en masse to provide a city's needs, or even farmland? Like, say, either powered by the nearby river itself or by the wind, pumping water straight up from the underground aquifier.
The pump concept goes back as far as Archimedes though! and raising water to different elevations has been a constant problem. Is your question specific to water pumps or to vacuum pumps?
I can't wait to see the responses. I believe it was Asimov's "Life and Energy" which detailed some of the history of vacuum pumps for irrigation and especially mining.
Vacuum pumps went much further than helping civilizations irrigate, it led to the steam engine and the combustion engine which has enabled most other advancements we have today.