The Shiloah inscription is an ancient Hebrew inscription located in King Hezekiah's tunnel in Jerusalem. Discovered in 1880, the inscription records the construction of the tunnel in the 8th century BCE.

History

The ancient city of Jerusalem, being on a mountain, is naturally defensible from almost all sides, but suffers from the drawback that its major source of fresh water, the Gihon spring, is on the side of the cliff overlooking the Kidron valley. This presents a major military weakness as the city walls, if high enough to be defensible, must necessarily leave the Gihon spring outside, thus leaving the city without a fresh water supply in case of siege.

It is possible that the Jebusites already had some method of accessing the water during times of battle, and that this method is the “tsinor” (pipe?) that King David’s army exploited to conquer the city. In any case the Bible records that King Hezekiah (8th century BCE), fearful that the Assyrians would lay siege to the city, blocked the spring’s water outside the city and diverted it through a channel into a pool within the city. This pool is called the Shiloah.

Archaeology

Hezekiah’s tunnel was examined extensively during the 19th century by such eminent archaeologists as Dr. Edward Robinson, Sir Charles Wilson, and Sir Charles Warren, but they all missed discovering a submerged 50 cm. by 70 cm. inscription in ancient Hebrew on the rock wall. This inscription was finally discovered in 1880 by a Jewish child, but was hardly readable due to the accumulated mineral deposits.

Professor A.H. Sayce was the first to make a tentative reading, and later the text was cleaned with an acid solution making the reading more authoritative. The inscription was detached from the wall and broken in an attempted theft, and presently resides at the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.

Translation

The Shiloah inscription records the construction of the tunnel. According to the text the work began at both ends simultaneously and proceeded until the stonecutters met in the middle.

The inscription contains 6 lines, of which the first is damaged. The words are separated by dots. Only the word “zada” on the third line is of doubtful translation.

A plausible translation is as follows:

1 [ ] the tunnel [ ] and this is the story of the tunnel while [ ]

2. the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? [ ] the voice of a man [ ]

3. called to his counterpart, [for] there was ??? in the rock, on the right [ ] and on the day of the

4. tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed

5. water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100?

6. cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters [ ]