Beneath Jerusalem, Water Still Flows Through An Ancient Tunnel

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It’s black and I’m knee-deep in a fast-flowing stream of cool water.  I’m in Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the quarter-sized plastic flashlight they sold me for four shekels is emitting a thin white ray of light that barely illuminates the tunnel’s three-foot wide outline. I’m by myself, slowly making my way along the S-shaped tunnel, my bare feet sloshing in the water.

My first thought is: “There’s no way the insurance companies in the United States would allow an unaccompanied person to navigate a 533-meter long (about 1750 feet), unlit tunnel built in the 8th century BCE”. But this is Israel where insurance underwriters don’t set user policy for Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Compared to some of the existential risks an Israeli is confronted with, a walk through a wet tunnel cut through the rock of the Ophel, is literally a walk in the park-- the City of David National Park, that is.

The City of David National Park is located south of the Temple Mount, outside the Old City, past the Dung Gate and across from the Arab Silwan neighborhood. It was this area, not the walled Old City that was originally the capitol of the Kingdom of Judah and the site of the original Jebusite city captured by King David. The Jebusites, King David, King Hezekiah and Nehemiah all dwelled here. It wasn’t until the Second Temple Period that Jerusalem expanded towards the Western Hill or Upper City.

The City of David is also where the Gihon Spring, the only natural water source in this area of hills and desert, is located.

We often take water for granted in Texas. In the desert, without water, there is no life. Around 700 BCE, King Hezekiah also thought deep and long about water, specifically the water that flowed from the Gihon Spring that provided drinking water for the people and animals of Jerusalem and irrigation water for their crops. At the time, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria was successful in capturing most of the fortified cities of Judah including Lachish.  It was only a matter of time before the Assyrians turned to Jerusalem. Hezekiah ordered the walls of Jerusalem to be fortified. But his major problem was that Gihon Spring was located outside the walls and could easily be taken by the Assyrians, rendering the city vulnerable.

"And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him. So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?" (2 Chronicles 32:2-4).

Under the threat of impending war, Hezekiah’s engineers came up with a two-part solution to the water problem:  one was to block off and divert the waters from the Gihon Spring and bring them first into the core of the city, where they could be reached by digging a deep well. Second, continue the flow of water south toward what is now the Siloam pool at the city’s boundary. This feat of engineering came to be known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel.

Two teams of stonecutters, probably using a lobed type of pick ax with a short, tapered handle, started digging at each end of the tunnel with the intention to meet in the middle.
The University of Houston’s John Lienhard in “The Engines of Our Ingenuity #664” calls Hezekiah’s Tunnel “a crazy piece of engineering”.
“It lurches about, piercing hard rock and missing softer stuff -- adding needless excavation,” said Lienhard. “Archeologists have made every excuse for bad design. Hezekiah, after all, worked under the stress of a siege.”
Lienhard, following the thought of Israeli geologist Dan Gill, looks at the tunnel in its geological context. “This is terrain where you find karst formations. It's a limestone deposit, shot through with water-carved caves,” said Lienhard. In other words, the winding course of the tunnel suggests that the hewers followed a natural karst, a channel cut by water in the limestone.
“So we learn again not to underestimate our forbears,” summarized Lienhard. “Hezekiah built this old waterworks under battle conditions. He followed the flow of the land. He left a marvel of adaptive civil engineering. And it's still there to see, 2700 years later.”
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Hezekiah’s Tunnel is located in the City of David National Park in Jerusalem.

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