HEZEKIAH'S TUNNEL 

Entrance to Hezekiah's Tunnel

Early in the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, (circa 725-697 BC) the Assyrians completed their conquest of Israel. The little kingdom of Judah was the only surviving independent state in the region.

Sensibly, Hezekiah was at first careful in his dealings with the Assyrians. He did not want to offend them. He concentrated on building the defenses of his own kingdom. He also overhauled the state's administrative system, and laid in reserves of grain, livestock, wine and oil, storing them in specially constructed storehouses.

He then enlarged an already existing water tunnel in Jerusalem. It led from the Spring of Gihon to the Pool of Siloam, and guaranteed water for Jerusalem in the event of a siege.

It was an extraordinary engineering achievement, for the 400 meter tunnel was cut through solid rock from both ends simultaneously. An inscriptions describing the work was discovered in 1880 on the wall of the tunnel itself. It is one of the best-known archaeological remains of the biblical period.

Copy of the inscription carved into the wall of Hezekiah's Tunnel

The passage, broken in some parts, reads:

... the tunnel ... and this is the story of the tunnel while ... the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut ... the voice of a man ... called to his counterpart, (for) there was zada (the meaning of this word is not clear) in the rock, on the right ... and on the day of the tunnel (being finished) the stone cutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100 cubits was the height over the head of the stone cutters ...

Hezekiah's defensive buildings and his faith in the magical powers of Yahweh made him over-confident. He seems to have thought he was destined to lead his people to glory against the might of the Assyrian Empire. Instead of using diplomacy, he threw caution to the winds. He joined the Egyptians in a rebellion against the new Assyrian monarch, Sennacherib.

It was a miscalculation. Sennacherib invaded Judah and devastated it. The slaughter culminated in the demolition of Lachish. 

A wall relief from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh shows the siege at Lachish

But when Sennacherib's forces camped outside Jerusalem, they fell prey to some sort of epidemic. Their losses through illness were so severe that they decided to retreat. Jerusalem, despite its modern-day fame, was not all that rich or important at the time.

Hezekiah believed that Yahweh had saved his city, and spent the remaining years of his life suppressing any other forms of worship in his kingdom.

The water in Hezekiah's tunnel is crystal clear

Cross-section of the water system in ancient Jerusalem

   Go back to  JERUSALEM - THE BORING BIT