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Jerusalem’s Underground Water Systems

Siloam Inscription Memorializes Engineering Achievement

By Simon B. Parker

Dan Gill’s new understanding of Jerusalem’s underground water installations, including Hezekiah’s famous tunnel, raises once more the question of the significance of the monumental inscription found in the tunnel recording the meeting of the two teams of tunnelers digging from opposite directions. This inscription is not the only ancient mention of Hezekiah’s tunnel. It is also referred to in two books of the Bible (2 Kings and 2 Chronicles), and in an apocryphal book known as Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Ben Sirach.a But all three of these literary references reflect a distinctly different viewpoint from the inscription in […]

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Footnotes

1.

Ecclesiasticus is part of the canon in Catholic tradition.

2.

See André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03.

3.

The Septuagint says iron, instead of bronze.

4.

I presume that a broad area was cleared and then the part most amenable to writing was selected, like clearing ground to pitch a tent.

5.

Perhaps “split,” “crack” or “overlap”; the etymology and meaning of zdh is still disputed and remains uncertain.

Endnotes

1.

See the discussion in J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 292–302, esp. 298–299.

2.

Perhaps in the sense “heard and understood.”