Hezekiah's Tunnel
The Bible records that prior to the Assyrian invasion of Judah in 701 BCE, King Hezekiah built a tunnel under the city of David to bring the waters of the Gihon Spring under the city to the Siloam Pool inside the southern walls. This tunnel was discovered in 1867 by the British explorer, Sir Charles Warren. The Biblical account of Hezekiah's tunnel follows:
II Chronicles 32:
1 After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fenced cities, and thought to win them for himself.
2 And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem.
3 He took council with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city; and they did help him.
4 So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?
II Chronicles 32:
30 This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David.
And again in:
II Kings 20:
20 And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?
II Chronicles 32:
1 After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fenced cities, and thought to win them for himself.
2 And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem.
3 He took council with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city; and they did help him.
4 So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?
II Chronicles 32:
30 This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David.
And again in:
II Kings 20:
20 And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?
The Siloam Inscription
The Siloam Inscription was discovered in 1880 about 20 feet from the exit of the tunnel. The inscription was physically removed and taken to Turkey where it remains today. The english translation of the inscription follows:
"(Behold) the excavation. Now this is the history of the breaking through. While the workmen were still lifting up the packaxe, each toward his neighbor, and while three cubits yet remained to (cut through, each heard) the voice of the other calling to his neighbor, for there was an excess in the rock on the right... And on the day of the breaking through, the excavators struck, each to meet the other, pickaxe against pickaxe; and there flowed the water from the spring to the pool over (a space of) one thousand and two hundred cubits. And ... of a cubit was the height of the rock above the heads of the excavators."
To the average scholar reading the above quotations, it would seem obvious that it was King Hezekiah that had the tunnel built to keep the water from the Assyrians and to insure a good water supply for his own people. Not so, however, for those that enjoy questioning the inspiration of the Bible and hesitate to use it as a tool in their research. Included in this number are Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron who have just published an article called "The date of the Siloam Tunnel Reconsidered" in the Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. In their article they concluded that Hezekiah's Tunnel should really be called the Siloam Tunnel and that it was probably built in the 9th century, before Hezekiah ever became king.
Surprisingly, another group of Israeli scientists from the Geological Survey of Israel has also concluded that Hezekiah did not build the tunnel. Their research, however, does not give an earlier date to the tunnel, like Reich and Shukron, but a later one. They say that Hezekiah didn't have time to dig the tunnel and have assigned the date of the digging to the reign of his son, Manasseh, after tht Assyrian conquest.
Obviously, Hezekiah's Tunnel could not be built before Hezekiah and also after him. Let us therefore look at some of the arguments of Reich and Shukron:
"When the cutting of the entire Siloam Tunnel was completed, it was connected to the spring (tunnel IV) and was thus activated... Sometime later, the Rock-Cut Pool was turned into a dwelling... The proprietor preferred to live on a higher level than at the bottom of the Rock-Cut Pool. He filled the pool with boulders and debris and thus raised the floor by ca. 3 m. We assume that the debris was randomly scraped off from the close surroundings of the pool's upper edges, thrown into the pool, leveled and eventually trodden upon to create a floor."
"In the light of the discussion above we are convinced that the earthen layers and fills deposited under the floor of the house constructed in the Rock-Cut Pool also continued in and above the "round chamber". This implies that tunnel IV had to be cut before these earthen layers were dumped into the "round chamber" and blocked the entrance into it. Since the opening to tunnel IV, with the rock-cut plaque beside it, is considered the northern beginning of the Siloam Tunnel, it is obvious that the contents of these earthen fills have a bearing on the date when Tunnel IV and the Siloam Tunnel were cut.
"The pottery sherds that were found in large quantities in the six squares under the floor of the house should represent the sherds that had once been present in the "Round Chamber". In other words, the latest pottery sherds found in the earthen fill postdate the blocking of the entrance into Tunnel IV and the Siloam Tunnel. They inevitably also postdate the cutting of the Siloam Tunnel."
Reich and Shukron date the fill dirt with accompanying potsherds to the 9th century BCE, "probably during a period as early as the days of Jehoash."
We must confess to spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing the above narritive. We tried (without sucess) to understand Reich and Shukron's logic in using old fill dirt and potsherds deposited into the pool some time after the completion of the tunnel to demonstrate any relationship to the date of the construction of the tunnel itself.
The builder of the house built up the foundation using what was available to him, old fill from the area. He did not break up new pots to make fill. When the Rock-Cut Pool went out of use (in Hezekiah's time), a house was built at the west end of the pool and the ground was first leveled by pushing existing trash into the pool.
Of course the trash would contain older material than the construction of the tunnel. The fill dirt came from around the ancient Gihon Spring. It didn't come from the tunnel itself. What if the builder of the house got his fill dirt from a nearby location that contained 10th century BCE potsherds. Would they therefore conclude that Solomon was the builder?
We have enjoyed the research of the Gihon Spring area by Reich and Shukron and especially the step by step description of the building of Hezekiah's Tunnel in Ronny Reich's book, Excavating the City of David. We do, however, believe they have gone overboard on this issue and would appreciate it if they would return the name of the tunnel once again to Hezekiah's Tunnel.
"(Behold) the excavation. Now this is the history of the breaking through. While the workmen were still lifting up the packaxe, each toward his neighbor, and while three cubits yet remained to (cut through, each heard) the voice of the other calling to his neighbor, for there was an excess in the rock on the right... And on the day of the breaking through, the excavators struck, each to meet the other, pickaxe against pickaxe; and there flowed the water from the spring to the pool over (a space of) one thousand and two hundred cubits. And ... of a cubit was the height of the rock above the heads of the excavators."
To the average scholar reading the above quotations, it would seem obvious that it was King Hezekiah that had the tunnel built to keep the water from the Assyrians and to insure a good water supply for his own people. Not so, however, for those that enjoy questioning the inspiration of the Bible and hesitate to use it as a tool in their research. Included in this number are Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron who have just published an article called "The date of the Siloam Tunnel Reconsidered" in the Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. In their article they concluded that Hezekiah's Tunnel should really be called the Siloam Tunnel and that it was probably built in the 9th century, before Hezekiah ever became king.
Surprisingly, another group of Israeli scientists from the Geological Survey of Israel has also concluded that Hezekiah did not build the tunnel. Their research, however, does not give an earlier date to the tunnel, like Reich and Shukron, but a later one. They say that Hezekiah didn't have time to dig the tunnel and have assigned the date of the digging to the reign of his son, Manasseh, after tht Assyrian conquest.
Obviously, Hezekiah's Tunnel could not be built before Hezekiah and also after him. Let us therefore look at some of the arguments of Reich and Shukron:
"When the cutting of the entire Siloam Tunnel was completed, it was connected to the spring (tunnel IV) and was thus activated... Sometime later, the Rock-Cut Pool was turned into a dwelling... The proprietor preferred to live on a higher level than at the bottom of the Rock-Cut Pool. He filled the pool with boulders and debris and thus raised the floor by ca. 3 m. We assume that the debris was randomly scraped off from the close surroundings of the pool's upper edges, thrown into the pool, leveled and eventually trodden upon to create a floor."
"In the light of the discussion above we are convinced that the earthen layers and fills deposited under the floor of the house constructed in the Rock-Cut Pool also continued in and above the "round chamber". This implies that tunnel IV had to be cut before these earthen layers were dumped into the "round chamber" and blocked the entrance into it. Since the opening to tunnel IV, with the rock-cut plaque beside it, is considered the northern beginning of the Siloam Tunnel, it is obvious that the contents of these earthen fills have a bearing on the date when Tunnel IV and the Siloam Tunnel were cut.
"The pottery sherds that were found in large quantities in the six squares under the floor of the house should represent the sherds that had once been present in the "Round Chamber". In other words, the latest pottery sherds found in the earthen fill postdate the blocking of the entrance into Tunnel IV and the Siloam Tunnel. They inevitably also postdate the cutting of the Siloam Tunnel."
Reich and Shukron date the fill dirt with accompanying potsherds to the 9th century BCE, "probably during a period as early as the days of Jehoash."
We must confess to spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing the above narritive. We tried (without sucess) to understand Reich and Shukron's logic in using old fill dirt and potsherds deposited into the pool some time after the completion of the tunnel to demonstrate any relationship to the date of the construction of the tunnel itself.
The builder of the house built up the foundation using what was available to him, old fill from the area. He did not break up new pots to make fill. When the Rock-Cut Pool went out of use (in Hezekiah's time), a house was built at the west end of the pool and the ground was first leveled by pushing existing trash into the pool.
Of course the trash would contain older material than the construction of the tunnel. The fill dirt came from around the ancient Gihon Spring. It didn't come from the tunnel itself. What if the builder of the house got his fill dirt from a nearby location that contained 10th century BCE potsherds. Would they therefore conclude that Solomon was the builder?
We have enjoyed the research of the Gihon Spring area by Reich and Shukron and especially the step by step description of the building of Hezekiah's Tunnel in Ronny Reich's book, Excavating the City of David. We do, however, believe they have gone overboard on this issue and would appreciate it if they would return the name of the tunnel once again to Hezekiah's Tunnel.
