Lethargic Man (anag.)

Towards the end of my time in Israel I took the opportunity to go and have a look at Ḥezekiah's water tunnel, in the City of David. The City of David archaeological site is outside the walls of present-day Jerusalem (though the original city stretched up to include the Ophel—the oldest part of the city—and part of the Temple Mount).

Arriving two hours before closing time, and finding admission to the water tunnel ceased two hours before closing time, I set off hotfoot into the cave system, but had the good fortune to soon catch up with a tour group, to which I appended myself.

Much to my delighted amusement, the tour guides were all carrying dog-eared תנ״ךs (Bibles), from bookmarked sections of which they were quoting to illustrate the story.

The original Jebusite city was not built in the best place for defence. It's located where it is because of the need to built it near access to water, in the form of the Giḥon Spring—but the Giḥon Spring was outside the city walls, thus presenting a weakness in time of siege. The Jebusites built four towers around the spring, and later an underground passage from the city to the spring—but like the original Tube lines, this tunnel was merely a surface-dug trench then roofed over with slabs, and in this case, subsequently disguised with vegetation.

It's thought that it was through this tunnel was how King David conquered the city in ca. 1000 BCE: As 2 Samuel 5 and 1 Chronicles 11 (the latter in square brackets) record:

The king and his men went to Jerusalem, to the Jebusites living in the land. They said to David, saying, You shall not come here unless you take away the blind and the lame, that is to say, that David could not come in there. Nevertheless David took the fortress of Zion, that being the city of David. David said on that day, Everyone who smites the Jebusites—arriving in the conduit—and the lame and the blind that are hated of David's soul, [he shall be chief and captain. Yoav ben-Ṣeruyah arose first, and he became chief]. Therefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. So David dwelt in the fortress, and called it the city of David; and David built round about from Millo and inward.

וַיֵּלֶךְ הַמֶּלֶךְ וַאֲנָשָׁיו יְרוּשָׁלִַם אֶל־הַיְבֻסִי יוֹשֵׁב הָאָרֶץ וַיֹּאמֶר לְדָוִד לֵאמֹר לֹא־תָבוֹא הֵנָּה כִּי אִם־הֱסִירְךָ הַעִוְרִים וְהַפִּסְחִים לֵאמֹר לֹא־יָבוֹא דָוִד הֵנָּה׃ וַיִּלְכֹּד דָּוִד אֵת מְצֻדַת צִיּוֹן הִיא עִיר דָּוִד׃ וַיֹּאמֶר דָּוִד בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא כָּל־מַכֵּה יְבֻסִי וְיִגַּע בַּצִּנּוֹר וְאֶת־הַפִּסְחִים וְאֶת־הַעִוְרִים שנאו (שְׂנוּאֵי) נֶפֶשׁ דָּוִד [יִהְיֶה לְרֹאשׁ וּלְשָׂר וַיַּעַל בָּרִאשׁוֹנָה יוֹאָב בֶּן־צְרוּיָה, וַיְהִי לְרֹאשׁ] עַל־כֵּן יֹאמְרוּ עִוֵּר וּפִסֵּחַ לֹא יָבוֹא אֶל־הַבָּיִת׃ וַיֵּשֶׁב דָּוִד בַּמְּצֻדָה וַיִּקְרָא־לָהּ עִיר דָּוִד וַיִּבֶן דָּוִד סָבִיב מִן־הַמִּלּוֹא וָבָיְתָה׃

Three centuries later, when the city was threatened by Sennacherib, the Bible records (2 Chronicles 32):

When Ḥezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he intended to fight against Jerusalem, he took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the springs which were outside the city, and they helped him in this. Many people were gathered together; they stopped all the springs, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water? ... This same Ḥezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Giḥon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Ḥezekiah prospered in all his works.

וַיַּרְא יְחִזְקִיָּהוּ כִּי־בָא סַנְחֵרִיב וּפָנָיו לַמִּלְחָמָה עַל־יְרוּשָׁלִָם׃ ג וַיִּוָּעַץ עִם־שָׂרָיו וְגִבֹּרָיו לִסְתּוֹם אֶת־מֵימֵי הָעֲיָנוֹת אֲשֶׁר מִחוּץ לָעִיר וַיַּעְזְרוּהוּ׃ ד וַיִּקָּבְצוּ עַם־רָב וַיִּסְתְּמוּ אֶת־כָּל־הַמַּעְיָנוֹת וְאֶת־הַנַּחַל הַשּׁוֹטֵף בְּתוֹךְ־הָאָרֶץ לֵאמֹר: לָמָּה יָבוֹאוּ מַלְכֵי אַשּׁוּר וּמָצְאוּ מַיִם רַבִּים׃ ... וְהוּא יְחִזְקִיָּהוּ סָתַם אֶת־מוֹצָא מֵימֵי גִיחוֹן הָעֶלְיוֹן וַיַּישְּׁרֵם לְמַטָּה־מַּעְרָבָה לְעִיר דָּוִיד וַיַּצְלַח יְחִזְקִיָּהוּ בְּכָל־מַעֲשֵׂהוּ׃

Having seen the water tunnel at Megiddo, I was expecting something similar here. The Megiddo tunnel, which dates to the eighth or ninth century BCE, runs for seventy yards underground in a straight line from within the city's walls, to the well outside the city, which was then buried to prevent ground-level access. Every day the women of the city would walk the tunnel to get water.

Ḥezekiah's tunnel is a different beast altogether. For a start, the floor is below water level, and it slopes down, thus bringing the mountain—or at least, its water—to Moḥammed. I'm told in January the water is a raging torrent over waist high. When I went it was mostly just at ankle depth, but near the start came up to the bottom of my shorts. (There was one person in our party in long trousers, who went through the tunnel anyway!)

The second big difference from the Megiddo tunnel is that this tunnel is much longer—533m long. On googling to learn where it was, I was expecting to read that the tunnel was a marvel of engineering of its age. Instead, I learned its construction was somewhat of a shambles. It took until I actually went into the tunnel, though, to fully appreciate why.

The tunnel was constructed by two teams of engineers heading towards each other—but with no means of ensuring they actually got to each other! So they dug in big S-shaped loops, in the hope that this would make sure the two tunnels eventually intersected each other, somewhere! Eventually they did, but one of the tunnels was way too high, so they had to deepen it, meaning that although the tunnel is only a couple of feet wide throughout, it varies from five to about twenty feet high!

In 1880 a plaque was found recording the construction of the tunnel (click on the image for a higher-resolution version):

[...] הנקבה. וזה. היה. דבר. הנקבה. בעוד. [מנפם. החצבים. את] הגרזן. אש. אל. רעו. ובעוד. שלש. אמת. להנק[ב. נשמ]ע. קל. אש. ק רא. אל רעו. כי. הית. זדה. בצר. מימן. ומ[שמ]אל. ובים. ה נקבה. הכו. החצבם. אש. לקרת. רעו. גרזן. על. [ג]רזן. וילכו[.] המים. מן. המוצא. אל. הברכה. במאתים. ואלף אמה. ומא ת. אמה. היה. גבה. הצר. על. ראש. החצב[ם

[] the tunnel [ ] and this is the story of the tunnel while [ ]
the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? [ ] the voice of a man [ ]
called to his counterpart, [for] there was ZADA in the rock, on the right [ ] and on the day of the
tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed
water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100?
cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters [ ]

The reason for the damage to the plaque is because it was levered off the wall by looters in 1891. Fortunately, the pieces were recovered, and returned to the Ottoman authorities, for which reason the inscription is currently on display in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

Linguistic note for non-Hebrew readers: This is a 2900 inscription, and yet, given a transliteration into the Assyrian alphabet the Jews adopted 2500 years ago, I can still (more-or-less) read it!

Linguistic note for Hebrew readers: Note the lack of matres lectionis in the old Hebrew: אש, קל and רעו where you'd expect איש, קול and רעהו. The Bible misses out certain matres lectionis (like the missing וs in של[ו]ש and אמ[ו]ת here), but never these ones! You can see the same phenomenon, only even more so, on the tenth-century BCE Gezer Calendar.

Emerging onto a Herodian road at the Pool of Shiloaḥ at the far end (or, corrupted into Greek, Siloam, or, corrupted again into Arabic, Silwān), I was surprised to see, both there, and back at the City of David excavations, that excavations are still ongoing, and still turning up exciting big new finds. I would have thought everything here would have been thoroughly excavated up to a century ago, but apparently not.

Silwān today is an Arab village at the edge of East Jerusalem. However, I was disturbed to find a number of Jewish houses there, bought by Jews who feel that such a historically important site should not be devoid of a Jewish presence today. Whilst I can see their point, I still find this rather disturbing...

In my next posting (probably), I'll be putting up my photographs. I'm just waiting now to hear back from a couple of the people I've asked for permission to use their image and/or name before doing so.