Hezekiah's Tunnel

When Sennacherib, king of Assyria laid siege to Jerusalem (701 BC), Hezekiah the Jewish king defended his city by strengthening the city walls and diverting water from Gihon (Jerusalem's water source) to a pool (Siloam) that he had built inside the southern walls of the city. "Hezekiah stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon, and bought them straight down on the west side of the City of David", says the Bible (II Chron 32:30, see also II Kings 20:20). The 533 m long tunnel made under sheer rock is considered to be an extraordinary feet of engineering. The discovery of this tunnel in 1838 is one of the greatest archaeological finding supporting Biblical descriptions. Ironically, 60 yeas later (1897), a young boy bathing in the Siloam pool discovered an inscription cut in the rock on the eastern side, about 19 feet into the tunnel. The inscription (known as Siloam Inscription) written 2700 years ago in ancient Hebrew describes about the dimensions and the way the tunnel was dug. The original Siloam Inscription is now in a museuem in Istanbul, Turkey. At the place where the inscription was found a copy has been displayed. I used a flash light to walk through the dark tunnel; and the cold water of Gihon was still flowing beneath my feet throughout. It took me almost half an hour to walk through the tunnel to Siloam pool.