Siloam tunnel

Common card · No. 267036

The newer Siloam Tunnel (Hebrew: נִקְבַּת הַשִּׁלֹחַ, romanized: Nikbat HaShiloaḥ), also known as Hezekiah's Tunnel (תעלת חזקיהו, Teʿalát Ḥizkiyáhu), is a water tunnel that was carved within the City of David in ancient times, now located in the neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem, Palestine. Its popular name is due to the most common hypothesis that it dates from the reign of Hezekiah of Judah, late 8th and early 7th century BC, and corresponds to the "conduit" mentioned in 2 Kings 20 in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Bible, King Hezekiah prepared Jerusalem for an impending siege by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, by "blocking the source of the waters of the upper Gihon, and leading them straight down on the west to the City of David" (2 Chronicles 32:30). By diverting the waters of the Gihon, he prevented the enemy forces under Sennacherib from gaining access to water. An older water system, sometimes called the Siloam Channel, partly fulfilled a similar purpose and dates back to the...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Tamar Hayardeni תמר הירדני, CC BY 3.0