City of David: Hezekiah's Tunnel (Part 1)

Back in the City of David, it's time to see Hezekiah's Tunnel!

I don't have many pictures from this part of the tour, because as I said in the last post, I was so in shock over all I'd seen already that I forgot to take my polarizing filter off my lens—and everything was blurry. (The picture above is actually from the end of the tunnel, outside). I was aware of the blurry photos, so I snapped a few with my phone. This is the entrance from inside.

Also, this part was completely in the dark. You can travel this tunnel on foot. The water stays the same temp year round, and can get up to thigh-height on an adult. It's completely dark inside, so you can walk it just as the Israelites did. I knew about this tunnel, but didn't want to walk it in Feb with long pants and regular shoes. Hence, the desire to return!

But this, is a picture of the entrance, where an adult would need to duck down just to go inside. WOW!!!!

The story of how this tunnel was dug is amazing! It's approx. 533 meters, and the engineers were in a hurry because an enemy army was traveling around conquering nations. They knew it would come to Jerusalem, and Hezekiah wanted the pool of Siloam covered, with a tunnel bringing water into the city, so that any army who tried to lay siege couldn't keep the city from water. So the group digging the tunnels split in to two and dug from opposite ends.

They were in complete darkness, on a hill, blindly digging... and somehow met up with only a small difference in elevation when they finally met.

The tunnel ends at the pool of Siloam.

Alongside the wet tunnel is the dry Canaanite tunnel, which I took:

WOW! Incredible! I actually knew a lot about Hezekiah's Tunnel before seeing it, thanks to Lynn Austin's incredible research in the Chronicles of the Kings series, which I highly recommend!

Finally, on the way back from the Jerusalem the day I first toured the City of David, I saw this article from All Israel News:

Turkey currently has a stone from 700 BC with an inscription that confirms how this tunnel was dug. It is one of the oldest known artifacts written in Hebrew, and it says:

“… this is the story of the tunnel, while [the hewers lifted] their axes toward their counterparts, and while three cubits more were to (be hewn?), was heard the voice of a man calling to his counterpart, (for) there was [a crack?] in the rock, on the right and on the left. And on the day of [the final barrier’s] piercing, the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and water flowed from the source to the pool for 1,200 cubits and 100 cubits was the height of the rock, over the head of the stonecutters …”

Wow! This stone was discovered while the Ottomans still ruled Jerusalem, and they took it back to Turkey. At the time of the writing of this article, Turkey hadn't confirmed this officially. But how cool- that this story came out the first time I ever saw Hezekiah's tunnel!

See you next week for the final stop (for now) in my visit to the City of David: the Pool of Siloam!