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SILOAM

The subterranean water supply system in ancient Jerusalem attributed to King Hezekiah that carried water from the Gihon Spring, the city’s only perennial source of water, to the Siloam Pool, a reservoir located in the southern reaches of the Tyropoeon Valley. It consists of four component parts: a spring, a rock-cut tunnel, a reservoir, and an overflow channel.

Located in the Kidron Valley outside the city’s fortification wall, the Gihon Spring is a siphon-type, karstic spring whose outflow varied with the seasons and whose waters could not be used efficiently unless they could be captured, stored, and distributed. Because the first water supply system designed to exploit the excess waters of the Gihon — the Siloam Channel — lay outside the city’s fortification wall, it served no strategic function. Therefore, when the Assyrians threatened Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah, the Siloam Tunnel was designed to exploit and protect the excess waters of the Gihon by bringing them into the fortified area of the city.

From the Gihon, a sinuous tunnel cut through the bedrock carried water for a distance of 533 m. (1750 ft.) to the Siloam Pool located only 320 m. (1050 ft.) away. While the tunnel exhibits only slight variations in width, ranging from .58-.65 m. (1.9-2.1 ft.), it exhibits extreme variations in height, ranging from 1.5-5.0 m. (4.9–16.4 ft.). The difference in level between its starting point and its present ending point is a minute 33 cm. (13 in.). Toolmarks visible on its walls indicate that it was quarried by two teams of tunnelers working toward each other from opposite directions. The meeting of the two teams is described in a monumental inscription — the Siloam inscription — carved into the rock wall near the tunnel’s south end.

The tunnel’s sinuous shape, its length, the variability of its height, and the way in which two teams of tunnelers working toward each other managed to meet have been subjects of considerable debate. Scholarly explanations for these anomalies include: the need to follow a soft, easily quarried stratum in the bedrock; the desire to avoid the tombs of the Davidic kings; and the ability to follow a natural fissure. In his hydro-geological survey of the City of David, Dan Gil demonstrates that the tunnel’s anomalous features resulted from the enlargement of a preexisting natural solution conduit that originally carried water toward the spring. Gil’s survey shows that the entire tunnel is cut through hard (mizzi ahmar) limestone and that its variation in height evidences the down-cutting required to reverse the water flow from the direction of the spring to the direction of the reservoir.

The rock-cut tunnel empties into a small reservoir called the Siloam Pool, known also as the pool of Shiloah and Birket es-Silwan. Excavations conducted in its vicinity have yielded evidence of reservoirs dating to the Roman and Byzantine periods. Although physical remains of earlier reservoirs have yet to be found, they were probably located in the same vicinity.

Beyond the Siloam Pool, a rock-cut channel — known as Channel IV — carried water in an easterly direction around the southern tip of the City of David toward the Kidron Valley either for purposes of irrigation or for storage in additional reservoirs. At its southeastern extremity, Channel IV incorporated the south end of the Siloam Channel and reversed the flow of water through it. Channel IV’s excavator, Raymond Weill, believed that it represented an addition to the Siloam Tunnel. However, David Ussishkin identifies it as the final segment of the Siloam Tunnel which, he believes, emptied in the vicinity of the Kidron rather than the Tyropoeon Valley.

The ascription of the Siloam Tunnel to Hezekiah (ca. late 8th century b.c.e.) is based on evidence in the Bible (2 Kgs. 20:20; 2 Chr. 32:30) and the Apocrypha (Sir. 48:17), as well as on the paleography of the Siloam inscription. Although aqueducts replaced the Gihon Spring as Jerusalem’s primary source of water during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Siloam Tunnel and Pool remained in use (John 9:7; Luke 13:4). During the Byzantine period, a church depicted on the Madeba Map was built above the Siloam Pool. Today a mosque stands above remains of the church. Channel IV remained in use until the Middle Ages when it was blocked by a stone wall.

Bibliography. D. Gil, “The Geology of the City of David and Its Ancient Subterranean Waterworks,” in Excavations at the City of David, 4: 1978-1985: Various Reports, ed. D. T. Ariel and A. DeGroot. Qedem 35 (Jerusalem, 1996); “How They Met: Geology Solves Long-standing Mystery of Hezekiah’s Tunnelers,” BARev 20/4 (1994): 20-33, 64; Y. Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David, 1: 1978-1982: Interim Report of the First Five Seasons. Qedem 19 (Jerusalem, 1984); D. Ussishkin, “The Original Length of the Siloam Tunnel in Jerusalem,” Levant 8 (1976): 82-95.

Jane M. Cahill

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

SILOAM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)