Hezekiah's Tunnel, the Siloam Inscription and the Pool of Siloam

The Bible tells that King Hezekiah "made the pool and the aqueduct, and brought the water into the city" (2 Kings 20:20), preparing Jerusalem for the Assyrian siege, around 701 B.C. The tunnel exists: it is about 533 meters carved through the rock, carrying water from the Gihon spring to the Pool of Siloam, and you can walk through it to this day.

In 1880, a boy playing near the southern exit of the tunnel noticed letters carved into the wall. It was an inscription in ancient Hebrew that tells of the moment when the two teams, digging from opposite sides, heard each other through the rock and met. It does not mention any king: it seems to have been made by the workers themselves. The plaque was torn from the wall, broken, and ended up taken by the Ottoman Turks to Istanbul, where it remains to this day.

In 2004, a sewage project revealed stone steps of the Pool of Siloam from the time of Jesus (what pilgrims visited before was a smaller pool, from the Byzantine period). The archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron excavated wide steps that went down to the water, and coins from the Jewish revolt (A.D. 66–70) helped date its use.

Why it matters: Hezekiah's work and the pool where Jesus healed the man born blind (John 9:7) are no longer just text: you can stand on both.