SILOAM (or Shiloah) INSCRIPTION

SILOAM (or Shiloah ) INSCRIPTION , an inscription found in 1880 in the village of Siloam (Arab. Silwān) in Jerusalem. It contains six lines engraved on the rock wall of a tunnel known as the "Siloam tunnel" which, running through the spur of a hill, conveys water from the spring of Gihon to the east of the spur into the pool of Siloam to the west. In biblical times, the wall of Jerusalem made a southward loop, and the pool of Siloam lay within it. The language of the inscription is biblical Hebrew and its script is Paleo-Hebraic. It is about 32 cm. (12 in.) high and 72 cm. (28 in.) long and tells the story of the digging of the tunnel, a very respectable engineering feat for its day. The purpose of the inscription was apparently to commemorate the completion of the excavation by two groups of diggers who began working at the same time from the two ends of the tunnel until they met. The inscription and the tunnel date back to the days of King *Hezekiah of Judah, who sealed the springs outside the walls of Jerusalem in order to prevent the water from being used by a besieging army. In order to secure the supply of water for the city during the time of siege, he diverted the waters of the Gihon spring through the tunnel into the city (ii Kings 20:20; ii Chron. 32:3–4, 30; cf. Isa. 22:11). The project was terminated almost certainly before 701 b.c.e., the year of Sennacherib's campaign against Judah. In the 19^th century, the inscription was cut out of the tunnel wall and removed to the Museum of Istanbul (then Constantinople).

bibliography:

Pritchard, Texts, 321; Pritchard, Pictures, 275, 744; J. Simons, Jerusalem in the Old Testament (1952), 175–92; Burrows, in: zaw, 70 (1958), 221–7 (Eng.); Stoebe, in: zdpv, 71 (1955), 124–40; Amiran, in: Qadmoniot, 1 (1968), 13–18; Hecker, in: M. Avi-Yonah (ed.), Sefer Yerushalayim (1957), 191–218.

[Bustanay Oded]