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The first deep probe by authors Reich and Shukron struck this corner of a mammoth tower that once enclosed the Gihon Spring. The walls of the tower are 12 feet thick. Along with the Pool Tower (see first photo of article) and perhaps two other towers yet to be discovered, the Spring Tower ensured that Jerusalem’s water supply remained secure. Pottery found in the crevices between the tower stones dates to the Middle Bronze Age II (18th and 17th centuries B.C.E.). Such cyclopean stone-working does not appear again in Jerusalem’s archaeological record until the reign of the master builder King Herod, in the first century B.C.E.