Jerusalem in June: Pool Of Siloam

Apparently the Pool of Siloam was much larger than the Pool Shown in the last post! In 2004, just a few meters away from the site, a group of workers fixing some underground sewage pipes ran into some very ancient steps! Work on the pipes was halted, and an excavation team was brought in.

Work was difficult because there was only a narrow section that the team had access to work in! Here you can see the section that they could excavate. As they began digging they uncovered three groups of five stairs each separated by narrow landings, perhaps to accommodate various water levels. The pool was about 225 feet long, and they unearthed steps on three sides.

For a while, all that you see had to be covered up while the crew moved a black pipe. By 2005, however, they were able to open it up again, and now see how grand the stairs are looking!

Unfortunately, as you can see, the pool goes way down underneath what is now the garden of a Greek Orthodox Church. Because of that, they were not able at that time to see how big it was. But, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times dated Aug. 9, 2005, The excavators have been able to date the pool fairly precisely because of two fortunate occurrences that implanted unique artifacts in the pool area.

When ancient workmen were plastering the steps before facing them with stones, they either accidentally or deliberately buried four coins in the plaster. All four are coins of Alexander Jannaeus, a Jewish king who ruled Jerusalem from 103 to 76 BC. That provides the earliest date at which the pool could have been constructed.

Similarly, in the soil in one corner of the pool, they found about a dozen coins dating from the period of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome, which lasted from AD 66 to 70. That indicates the pool had begun to be filled in by that time."

Because the pool sits at one of the lowest spots in Jerusalem, rains flowing down the valley deposited mud into it each winter. It was no longer being cleaned out, so the pool quickly filled with dirt and disappeared. Imagine, this magnificent pool being covered for centuries! This is an interesting photo to show how one corner appeared.

This is an artists rendition of what the complete pool may have looked like.

The water that comes from Hezekiah's Tunnel and creates the first pool that we showed, would have continued into the larger pool. The water now continues to flow through this underground tunnel, and some of the supporting stones still stand.