The Siloam Inscription

The inscription was found in 1880 on the wall of the tunnel that carries water from the Gihon spring under the old city of Jerusalem to the pool of Siloam. It is written in the old Hebrew script. It tells how the tunnellers worked towards each other from both ends, how, with three cubits still to cut, a man’s voice was heard calling to his fellow, how pick struck against pick, and how the water then ran from the spring to the pool, a distance of 1,200 cubits, with a hundred cubits of rock above the workers’ heads.

The text names no king and gives no date. Kings and Chronicles say that Hezekiah made a pool and a conduit and brought the waters of Gihon down to the west side of the City of David (2 Kings 20:20) (2 Chronicles 32:30), and the tunnel is generally identified with that work. On that ground, and from the form of its letters, the inscription is dated to about 700 BC. Its link with Hezekiah is an inference, though a widely accepted one.