Image Details

Hershel Shanks

BYZANTINE POOL OF SILOAM. With youths swimming nearby, a woman does laundry in the clear, clean waters; her basket rests on the edge of the traditional site of the Pool of Siloam—the church and pool built in the fifth century by the Byzantine empress Eudocia at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel to commemorate the miracle that took place there. While perhaps the best-known “Pool of Siloam,” this is actually the third Pool of Siloam. The Pool of Siloam of the Second Temple period was discovered southeast of this Byzantine pool in 2004, and the location of the original First Temple period pool is still unknown.