Lecture 5 -- Biblical Jerusalem’s Ancient Water Systems

Summary and Overview

One of the most exciting things about archaeology in Jerusalem
is that ongoing discoveries are constantly causing us to revise our
understanding of what the original city looked like.

In this lecture, we will talk about the water systems that supplied the City
of David. The main water supply was the Gihon Spring, which comes
out of the ground at the eastern foot of the hill of the City of David.
Unfortunately, because this spring is located at the foot of the hill inside a
valley, putting a fortification wall around it wouldn’t work because people
on the Mount of Olives, which is higher, could shoot over the wall. Thus, the
Jebusites placed their fortification wall halfway up the slope of the hill. This
leaves the water supply outside the walls, a serious problem during times
of siege.

During the Bronze and Iron Ages, three different water systems were built in
order to cope with this problem: Warren’s Shaft (named for the explorer who
discovered it), the Siloam Channel, and Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Warren’s Shait,
which seems to date from Jebusite times, led toma gigantic rock-cut pool
surrounded by massive towers. The description in the Hebrew Bible of
David’s conquest of Jerusalem may refer to this water system: The account
indicates that David’s men climbed up through the tsinnor to take the
city. In modem Hebrew, the word tsinnor means a pipe, such as a water
pipe, but in the Hebrew Bible, it’s not clear what this term means.

The second water system is the Siloam Channel. The Siloam Channel was
meant to provide a place for water to go when the massive pool associated
with Warren’s Shaft was full. It channeled the excess water through the
base of the Kidron Valley, where water could flow out and irrigate plots of
land. Another large pool for storing excess water was located at the very
southern tip of the City of David. Because this second system worked
together with the first, it also was probably Jebusite.

The most famous and latest of the three water systems is Hezekiah’s Tunnel,
built by this king of Judah in preparation for the Assyrian invasion and siege
of Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible tells us that Hezekiah wished to prevent the
Assyrians from having access to the water from the spring that was flowing
through the Siloam Channel; thus, a new tunnel was built, one that was
completely underground and led to a pool inside the city Walls. (Hezekiah
also built a new fortification wall, more than 20 feet thick, to surround the
Western Hill, where people were living by his time.)

Hezekiah’s Tunnel winds its way in a very irregular, snaky manner for 500
meters underneath the City of David. What is so amazing is that the gradient,
the slope, of the bottom of this water tunnel, is only 0.6 percent-a difference
of only 30 cm from beginning to end. Furthermore, the tunnel was cut by
two teams of men, one starting at the Gihon Spring and the other at the outlet
end; both of those teams cut through solid bedrock underneath the City of
David and somehow met in the middle.

In the next lecture, we will look at the history and archaeology of the northern
kingdom of Israel.

Important Terms
Jebusites: The original (Bronze Age) population of Jerusalem.
Kidron Valley: Separates the Mount of Olives from the Temple Mormt and
the City of David.
tsinnor: Biblical Hebrew word perhaps referring to the Warren’s Shaft
system in the City of David.
Warren’s Shaft (along with the Siloam Channel and Hezekiah’s Tunnel):
Ancient water systems of Jerusalem.

Questions to Consider:
1. How did Jerusalem’s ancient inhabitants deal with the critical problem
of water supply and access?
2. How does archaeology complement or supplement our knowledge of
Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah, as reported in the biblical account?

Lecture 5-Transcript
Biblical Jerusalem’s Ancient Water Systems

In our last lecture, we talked about the biblical city of Jerusalem, focusing on
the archaeological remains of the settlement in the City of David. What I’d
like to do now is continue talking about the archaeology ofthe City of David
focusing especially on the water systems which supplied the inhabitants of
the city.

The main water supply in biblical Jerusalem was the Gihon Spring, which
comes out of the ground at the eastern foot of the City of David just below
the area where Area g with the glacis and the Israelite houses that Yigal
Shiloh found are located. The problem is access to the water supply in the
Gihon Spring. All of our discussion is going to focus on the water in the
Gihon Spring.

What is the problem with the access to the water supply? This is actually
connected with the location of the city wall, the fortification wall of the City
of David. If we were to take a section looking through the City of David
from south to north it would look something like this, a ridge with the Kidron
Valley on the east and the Tyropoeon Valley on the west and cresting at the
top of the hill.

The Gihon Spring comes out of the ground at the foot of the eastern slope of
the City of David, so here is the problem. If you are building a fortification
wall around the settlement on this little hill, where are you going to put
that line of wall relative to the water in the spring? Ideally what you would
want to do is include the spring inside the fortification wall. The problem is
since the spring is located at the foot of the hill inside a valley, putting your
fortification wall around the spring isn’t really going to work well because
what it’s going to do is leave you vunerable to attack. People sitting a little
bit up on the slope of the Mount of Olives across from you for example are
going to be able to shoot easily over that line of fortification wall.

Therefore, the line of the fortification wall should be further up the slope.
Macalister, as we saw, thought that he found the line of the fortification wall
all the way at the crest of the hill, but that wasn’t the original fortification
wall of the Jebusite city. In fact, the fortification wall of the Jebusite city,
the original City of David, was found originally in excavations by Kathleen
Kenyon and later more of it in excavations by Yigal Shiloh in the 1970s
halfway down the slope of the hill. This actually makes very good sense
because strategically then the wall was located enough above the valley floor
so that people outside the wall can’t easily shoot over it.

Yet you are leaving enough space for settlement inside the line of that city
wall because that already is a very small hill. The farther up the hill you put
the wall the smaller area you have within the space of that wall. But this still
leaves a problem. The problem is your water supply is outside the line of the
city wall.

In times of peace that’s not a problem. You simply go out a gate in the wall
and down to the spring and collect your water and go back into the city.
The problem is in times of war, in times of siege. Because in times of siege
you will then have to go outside the fortification wall to get water exposing
yourself then to danger, to being killed by the enemy. So in biblical Jerusalem
then there was a major problem, a major concern with protecting the access
to the water supply in times of siege.

Over the course of the biblical period, that is over the course of the Bronze
Age and the Iron Age, three different water systems were built in order to
cope with this problem. These three systems are called as follows: the first
and earliest system is called Warren’s Shaft named after the early explorer
who discovered it; the next system is called the Siloam Chamiel; and the
third and latest of the three systems is called Hezekiah’s Tunnel. We are
going to start by talking about Warren Shaft, then the Siloam Channel, and
then Hezekiah’s Tunnel.

Let’s begin first with Warren’s Shaft. Warren’s Shaft is named after Charles
Warren, the explorer who discovered it. When we look at a cross-section
of Warren’s Shaft, what we see are a series of underground tunnels that go
underneath the city wall which is located about halfway up the slope of the
hill. The idea of Warren’s Shaft was to provide access to the water in the
spring without going outside the walls of the city, and therefore we have this
intricate series of underground tunnels.

One of the most exciting things about archaeology and especially working
in Jerusalem is the fact that ongoing discoveries are constantly causing us
to revise our understanding of what the original city looked like. This is
the case with Warren’s Shaft because for a very long time, from the time
of Warren’s original discovery until very recently, we thought that Warren’s
Shaft operated in the following way.

We thought that you entered the shaft partway up the slope inside the wall of
the city through an underground tunnel which led you down into a stepped
passage and then to a horizontal tunnel. When you reached the end of that
horizontal tunnel, there was a tall vertical shaft that went straight down to
yet another horizontal tunnel that would’ve brought water from the spring
to the base of the vertical shaft. The idea being that you would’ve walked
through the horizontal tunnel to the top of the vertical shaft, reached some
sort of wooden platform there, and then be able to drop down your bucket
down that vertical shaft to the water that flowed to the base of it, and pull
the water up and draw the water and go back into the city.

In other words, for a long time we thought that’s how Warren’s Shaft
worked. But excavations ongoing in Jerusalem in the last 10 to 15 years
have literally revolutionized our understanding of the way this water system
originally worked.

What we are looking at here is a plan that shows the old way we thought
Warren’s Shaft used to work.

That vertical shaft that used to be thought to be such an integral part of
Warren’s Shaft system is now known not to be part of the system at all. It
apparently is a natural shaft in the bedrock that was eaten away by the water
at some point that has nothing to do with the water system at all. So how did
Warren’s Shaft originally work? How did this system originally work?

Originally you entered Warren’s Shaft in the same way as we thought before.
That is you came in through the tunnel within the wall of the city, partway up
the slope of the hill through a sort of a stepped tunnel that led down to that
horizontal tunnel or passage. Instead of then reaching the top of that vertical
shaft, which is not part of the water system at all, you continued along and
reached the edge of a gigantic rock cut pool.

This gigantic rock cut pool stored water Hom the Gihon Spring, and when
you reached the edge of that pool you would then drop down your bucket
from some sort of a platform, iill it up, and then go back in through the
wall of the city. The ongoing excavations have brought to light not just this
gigantic rock cut pool, but also a series of massive towers that protected the
pool and also enclosed the spring. The size of the pool and the size of the
towers is hard to describe.

We are looking at a picture of a small corner of this rock cut pool. This water
system then is a massive water system, much bigger and more monumental
then we ever suspected. So that is how the system worked. We know now
how the water system worked.

Next question is: What is the date of this water system? One possibility is
that it dates to the time of David and Solomon. Yigal Shiloh, who conducted
excavations in the City of David, thought that the system must date to the
time of David and Solomon on the basis of parallels with water systems at
other Israelite sites. I think that most scholars probably agree that this system
dates to the middle Bronze Age; that is to about 1800 B.C., which means
that it was part of the Jebusite system of Jerusalem. So this was a water
system that was functioning under the Jebusites and which then continued to
function after David comes in with the Israelites and they take over the city
and settle in it.

In addition there is a controversy about the identification of this water system
relative to a passage or an episode that’s described in the Hebrew Bible and
specifically that is the conquest of Jerusalem by David. Remember that it
was David who took Jerusalem from the Jebusites. Before the time of David,
the Israelites had not been able to take Jerusalem because, according to the
biblical account, it was such a strongly fortified city.

So the biblical account describes David’s conquest of Jebusite Jerusalem, and
the passage is very interesting because it might actually include a reference
to this water system. “And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against
the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, ‘You will not
come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you oft",-thinking,
‘David cannot come in here.’ ” So in other words the Jebusites are mocking
David and his army; our city is so strongly fortified that even blind men and
lame men can keep you from conquering it.

Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the City
of David. And David said on that day, “Whoever would smite the
Jebusites, let him get up the [and now we get a Hebrew word]
tsinnor to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by David’s
soul.”   And David dwelt in the stronghold and called it the City
of David.

In another passage we are told that it was David’s general Joab son of Sirah
who managed to climb up through this tsinnor.

In other words the biblical account suggests that David’s army was able
to take Jerusalem by climbing up through something called a tsinnor. The
problem is what is a tsinnor? This is the only place in the Hebrew Bible
where this word occurs. In modem Hebrew the word “tsinnor” means a pipe
like a water pipe. But in the Hebrew Bible it’s not clear what this term means.
Some scholars have suggested that maybe tsinnor is Warren’s Shaft system
and that maybe what happened is that the Israelites were able to take the city
by climbing up through this water system, entering the city and then opening
the gates to the Israelite army.

If this is the case, then the tsinnor that is referred to in this passage is Warren’s
Shaft system. Remember, by the way, that the system apparently was built in
the time of the Jebusites, so it actually would’ve already existed and been
functioning when David took the city.

The second water system is the Siloam Channel. The Siloam Channel is
very different from Warren’s Shaft. It is a channel that starts again at the
Gihon Spring and runs outside the wall of the city at the foot of the Kidron
Valley to a big pool at the southern tip of the City of David. Here’s the
question: Why do you need a second water system; that is why is the Siloam
Channel necessary?

The Gihon Spring is a kind of a spring that gushes and abates, water gushes
and abates. What happens is that the water gushes and as it starts to flow,
some of it was stored in that gigantic rock cut pool that has recently been
discovered. But what happens when that pool is full and the spring continues
to gush forth; that is, what do you do with the excess water from the spring?
You must provide an outlet for the excess water. That’s exactly what the
Siloam Channel was.

The Siloam Channel was the access for the excess water from the Gihon
Spring. When that gigantic pool, rock cut pool, next to the Gihon Spring
was filled up, the extra water then was channeled into the Siloam Charmel
through the base of the Kidron Valley where there were openings in the
charmels so that water could flow out and irrigate plots of land in the valley.
Then linally at the very southern tip of the City of David there was another
very large pool for storing all of that excess water, and that pool is called the
Siloam Pool or Pool of Siloam, and we will come back and talk about that
as well.

The remains of the Siloam Charmel are known and can actually be seen
today running along the eastern foot of the City of David through the Kidron
Valley, and in some places you can see it cut into bedrock with massive stone
slabs still covering the top of the Charmel. There’s a question then: What is
the date of the Siloam Channel‘? Actually the date of the Siloam Channel
must be the same as the date of Warren’s Shaft because the two worked
together. Because the whole idea, the whole point of the Siloam Charmel is
to carry off the excess water from the Gihon Spring; so whatever the date is
of Warren’s Shaft must also be the date of the Siloam Channel.

If Warren’s Shaft is from the time of David and Solomon, then so is the
Siloam Channel. But again most likely Warren’s Shaft is from the middle
Bronze Age, and therefore the Siloam Channel should also be dated to the
middle Bronze Age.

The most famous and latest of these three water systems is Hezekiah’s
Tunnel. This tunnel was made in the time of King Hezekiah. Hezekiah was
the King of Judah at the end of the 8th century B.C. In preparation for the
Assyrian invasion and siege of Jerusalem in 701, Hezekiah built this water
system. The water system still functions today, still has water flowing through
it, and in fact visitors to Jerusalem often walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel as
part of their visit.

The tunnel is very interesting because it winds its way in a very irregular,
snaky manner underneath the City of David beginning at the Gihon Spring,
on the northeast side of the City of David, and ending on the southwest side
of the City of David, all of it cut through solid bedrock underground. In fact
the tunnel winds for a distance of about 500 meters, although the distance
between the beginning point and the end point are only 300 meters, a meter
is about a yard. So the crow flies, as the crow flies, it’s only about 300 meters
from beginning to end, but the actual length because it winds around so much
is over 500 meters.

What is so amazing is that the gradient, the slope, of the bottom of the tunnel,
this water tunnel, the gradient is only 0.6 percent from beginning to end.
That’s a difference of only 30 cm from the beginning till the end. This is
really an engineering feat.

Today you can walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, and when you do you’re
walking through with the water usually up to about the level of your hips.
One of the interesting things as you walk through the tunnel is that you can
see how it was made, and we actually know and we’re going to see that
the tunnel was cut by two teams of men; one team starting at the Gihon
Spring and the other team starting at the outlet end, and both of those teams
cut through solid bedrock underneath the City of David winding their way
around and somehow met joined up in the middle.

How they met, how they joined up, we don’t know. Some scholars have
suggested that maybe they were following a natural crack in the bedrock
through which water was already flowing. I actually don’t believe that, and
the reason is as you walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel today you can see
places where there are false starts, cuttings in the bedrock where they started
to go off in a different direction. If they were following already an existing
crack with water flowing in it, then why would you have false starts.

So we really don’t know exactly how these two teams of men managed to
wind their way cutting through solid bedrock and meet up somehow in the
middle. It’s an engineering feat that we actually don’t understand. One of the
interesting things too, as you walk through the tunnel, is that you notice that
the ceiling is higher in some points, lower in some points, sometimes it’s so
low that you have to stoop a bit as you walk through it. Sometimes it gets
very high and yet the gradient of the floor is that very, very gentle gradient.
They managed to keep that floor level a very gentle gradient from beginning
to end.

One of the questions about Hezekiah’s Tunnel is: Why did he make this
new water system? When Hezekiah became King on the eve of the Assyrian
invasion, there already were two perfectly good functioning water systems
in Jerusalem; Warren’s Shaft and the Siloam Channel were still working. So
why did Hezekiah make a new water system when the other two were still
functioning perfectly well?

The Hebrew Bible actually tells us why. Let us now see what the Hebrew
Bible says and try and Understand it.

When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib [that’s the Assyrian king]
intended to attack Jerusalem, he planned with his civil and military
officers to stop up the water of the springs outside the city; and they
helped him. They gathered together a large number of people and
stopped up the springs and the stream which flowed through the
land. “Why should the kings of Assyria come here and find much
water?” they asked.   Hezekiah closed the upper outlet of the
waters of Gihon and directed them down to the west side of the City
of David.

This passage explains exactly the problem. The problem was not that the two
water systems weren’t working. The problem was the Siloam Channel. The
Siloam Channel was a non-defensive system located outside the walls of the
city. When the Assyrians came and besieged the city then, they would’ve had
access to water from the spring, the water from the spring that was flowing
through the Siloam Channel. Hezekiah didn’t want the Assyrians to have
access to that water, so they stopped up the Siloam Channel. But if you stop
up the Siloam Channel, you still have the problem that you have to provide
an outlet for the excess water from the spring.

So they built a new tunnel, one that was completely underground, and
one that led to a pool that was inside the walls of the city so that when the
Assyrians came and besieged the city, they would not have access to the
water from the spring. The story actually continues, because in 1880 a little
Arab boy from the local village was playing at the outlet end of Hezekiah’s
Tunnel that is the end where the tunnel ends up with a pool which is today
called the Pool of Siloam. There’s still a pool there. It’s a different Pool of
Siloam than the original one, than the one that was at the outlet of the Siloam
Channel, but there’s a pool now at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel called the
Pool of Siloam.

A little Arab villager was playing, a little boy was playing in the outlet in
there, in the area of the Pool of Siloam, and just inside looked up and saw
an inscription on the wall. That inscription then was removed and eventually
was taken to Istanbul, because in 1880 Palestine was part of the Ottoman
Empire. This inscription was taken to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman
Empire, and was put on display in the archaeological museum in Istanbul
where it remains on display until today.

This inscription is an inscription that dates to the time of Hezekiah, to the late
8th century B.C. It is written in Biblical Hebrew script and Biblical Hebrew
language and it describes the completion of Hezekiah’s Tunnel and here is
what it says.

This is the story of the boring through. While [the tunnelers lifted]
the pick-axe each toward his fellow and while 3 cubits [remained
yet] to be bored [through, there was heard] the voice of a man
calling his fellow-for there was a split [or overlap] in the rock on
the right hand and on [the left hand].

In other words this is describing that moment when the two teams of men are
so close together that they can hear each other’s voices through the bedrock,
but they haven’t yet actually reached each other.

“When the tunnel was driven through, the tunnelers hewed the rock, each
man against his fellow, pick-axe against pick-axe. And the water flowed from
the spring toward the reservoir for 1,200 cubits. The height of the rock above
the head of the tunnelers was a 100 cubits.” So this is a very important and
very interesting inscription that dedicates the completion of this monumental
water tunnel.

Ongoing excavations in the area of the City of David are bringing to light
another part of ancient Jerusalem’s water system, because the outlet today
of Hezekiah’s Tunnel is called the Pool of Siloam. But that pool as you see
it today, and which many visitors to Jerusalem see and visit, dates to the
Byzantine period, that is to the 5th and 6“‘ centuries A.D. It’s centuries later
than the time of Hezekiah.

What did the original Pool of Siloam look like‘? Excavations in the area of
the City of David for the last, let’s say, five to ten years have been bringing
to light a monumental pool that is an earlier version of the Pool of Siloam,
not from the Byzantine period, but from the late Second Temple period.
Specifically what we have here is a gigantic pool, much larger than the
Byzantine pool is, that is surrounded by rows of steps. The rows of steps
by the way indicate that this was not just a pool used for storing water, for
drinking, and for general purposes, but that this pool was also used as a
Jewish ritual bath, something that we will be discussing later in this course.

What’s so exciting about this is that this Pool of Siloam that is now coming
to light, which is so big and which has steps going all around it, is a pool that
dates to the time of Jesus. In other words, this pool that is coming to light
is the Pool of Siloam that existed when Jesus was in Jerusalem. This is so
important because of course we have a passage in the fourth gospel John that
talks about Jesus performing a miraculous healing at the Pool of Siloam.

And it says,

And he [Jesus] passed along and he saw a man who had been blind
from his birth.   And as he said this, he spat on the ground and
made clay with the saliva, and he put the clay on the man’s eyes,
and said to him, “Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam”--a name
which means One who has been sent in Hebrew Shiloah. So he
went and washed them, and went home able to see.

So if we want to imagine the setting for this story as told in John, then we
should imagine this gigantic Pool of Siloam that is now being brought to
light in archaeological excavations in the City of David.

In advance of the Assyrian attack and siege of Jerusalem, Hezekiah not only
built a new water system, but he also built a new fortification wall, not a
new fortification wall around the City of David, which had perfectly good
existing fortification walls, but a different fortification wall to surround the
western hill, because by the time of Hezekiah people were now living on
the western hill. Originally when David takes Jerusalem, the city consists
only of the City of David and then Solomon expands the city to the
Temple Mount.

By the time of Hezekiah, by the late 8“‘ century B.C., people were now
living on top of the western hill and that part of Jerusalem was not fortified.
Remains of this fortification wall were brought to light in excavations in
Jerusalem in the 197 Os, and this wall is so thick, over 20 feet thick, that the
excavator called it The Broad Wall.

One of the most interesting things about talking about biblical Jerusalem is
talking about the modern exploration of the city of Jerusalem. We are greatly
indebted to l9“‘ century explorers who went through the city under very
difficult conditions and mapped and explored it and documented remains that
in many cases are no longer preserved. One of these early explorers was a
British explorer named Captain Charles Warren. We’ve already talked about
Warren in relation to Warren’s Shaft.

In addition to documenting, to finding and documenting Warren’s Shaft,
Warren also surveyed Hezekiah’s Trmnel in the year 1867. What he did is
to go through the tunnel and make a plan of it, documenting it completely,
and he took in an assistant and they went through this tunnel. Today when
you walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, it’s actually a very easy and kind of
fun thing to do. It takes about a half an hour to walk through it now, and you
take your flashlight and you walk through and no problem at all. But in 1867,
walking through Hezekiah’s Tunnel was not nearly so easy.

Charles Warren has left us a description of his exploration of Hezekiah’s
Tunnel, and I would like to read it with you because it is actually funny for
some of the wrong reasons. I’m sure it wasn’t funny to him. But reading
it today, not only shows how difficult this exploration was, but also shows
how determined Warren was to complete his scientific investigation of this
water system.

In the month of December 1867, I [that’s Charles Warren] made a
thorough examination and survey of the passage leading from the
Virgin’s Fount [that’s the Gihon Spring] to Siloam [i.e. the Pool of
Siloam]. We entered from the Siloam end, so as to have as much
clean work as possible. [In other words they started from the end of
the Pool of Siloam, the outlet, the reason being that the ceiling there
is higher than at the beginning end.] For the first 350 feet it was
plain sailing. ...  At 450 feet the height of the passage was reduced
to 3 feet 9 inches. ...  At 600 feet it is only 2 feet 6 inches high.

Our difficulties now commenced. Sergeant Birtles [who was the
assistant] with a Fellah [a local villager] went ahead, measuring with
tape, while I followed with compass and field book. The bottom is
a soft silt, with a calcerous crust at the top, strong enough to bear
human weight, except in a few places, where it let us down with a
flop.   We were now crawling on all fours, and thought we were
getting on very pleasantly, the water being only 4 inches deep, and
we were not yet wet higher than our hips. Presently bits of cabbage-
stalks came floating by, and we suddenly awoke to the fact that the
waters were rising.  ...

The rising of the waters had not been anticipated, as they had risen
only two hours previous to our entrance. At 850 feet the height of
the channel was reduced to 1 foot 10 inches, and here our troubles
began. The water was running with great violence, l foot in height,
and we, crawling full length, were up to our necks in it. I was
particularly embarrassed: one hand necessarily wet and dirty, the
other holding a pencil, compass, and field-book; the candle for the
most part in my mouth. Another 50 feet brought us to a place where
we had regularly to run the gauntlet of the waters. [They had to go
completely under water.] The passage being only 1 foot 4 inches
high, we had just 4 inches breathing space, and had some difficulty
in twisting our necks around properly. When observing, my mouth
was underwater.  ...

We were now going in a zigzag direction towards the northwest,
and the height increased to 4 feet 6 inches, and at 1100 feet we were
again crawling with a height of only 1 foot 10 inches. We should
probably have suffered more from the cold than we did, had not
our risible faculties been excited by the sight of our Fellah in front
plunging and puffing through the water like a young grampus. [So
they are trying to keep up with their villager there.]

At 1150 feet the passage again averaged in height 2 feet to 2 feet
6 inches; at 1400 feet we heard the sound of water dripping.
At 1450 feet we commenced turning to the east, and the passage
attained a height of 6 feet; at 1658 feet we came upon our old friend,
the passage leading to the Ophel Shaft, [that is Warren’s Shaft] and,
after a further advance of 50 feet, to the Virgin’s Fount [that is to
the Gihon Spring].

We conclude this lecture then by talking about the difficulties of the early
explorers in finding these water systems, documenting these water systems,
and it’s to them that we owe much of our information about the early history
and archaeology of Jerusalem. We’ve now spent quite a bit of time looking
in detail at the history and archaeology of Jerusalem in the biblical period.
What l’d like to do next time is turn outside of Jerusalem and look at the
northern kingdom of Israel at what everyday life was like in the northen
kingdom and what we know about the history and archaeology of the
northen kingdom of Israel.