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HERSHEL SHANKS

HEZEKIAH’S WATERWORKS. In the eighth century BCE, King Hezekiah commissioned a tunnel to connect the Gihon Spring to the Siloam Pool. Anticipating an Assyrian siege, he sought to protect Jerusalem’s water supply by directing the water to a pool well within the city’s fortifications. Located at the southwestern edge of the City of David, the Siloam Pool provided water to those who lived on Jerusalem’s western hill. Hezekiah’s Tunnel can still be traversed (shown here). Today it empties into a pool from the Byzantine period, but, to the southeast, archaeologists found a pool dated to the Roman period. The eighth-century BCE Siloam Pool has yet to be found, but it likely is beneath the Roman pool or nearby.