Hezekiah's Tunnel

Here's how Wikipedia explains this tunnel:

Hezekiah's Tunnel, or the Siloam Tunnel (Hebrew: נִקְבַּת השילוח‎, Nikbat HaShiloah) is a tunnel that was dug underneath the City of David in Jerusalem before 701 BC during the reign of Hezekiah. The tunnel is mentioned in2 Kings 20:20 in the Bible. The Bible also tells us that King Hezekiah prepared Jerusalem for an impending siege by the Assyrians, by "blocking the source of the waters of the upper Gihon, and leading them straight down on the west to the City of David" (2 Chronicles 32). The tunnel has been securely dated both by the written inscription found on its wall (Siloam Inscription), and by dating organic matter contained in the original plastering.^[1]It is one of the few intact, 8th century BC structures in the world that the public can not only visit, but enter and walk through.

The tunnel, leading from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam,^[2][3][4] was designed as an aqueduct to provide Jerusalem with water during an impending siege by the Assyrians, led by Sennacherib. The curving tunnel is 533 m long, and by using a 30 cm (0.6‰) gradient altitude difference between each end, conveyed water along its length from the spring to the pool.

According to the Siloam inscription, the tunnel was excavated by two teams, one starting at each end of the tunnel and then meeting in the middle. The inscription is partly unreadable at present, and may originally have conveyed more information than this. It is clear from the tunnel itself that several directional errors were made during its construction.^[5] Recent scholarship has discredited the idea that the tunnel may have been formed by substantially widening a pre-existing natural karst.^[6]

The difficult feat of making two teams digging from opposite ends meet far underground is now understood to have been accomplished by directing the two teams from above using sounds generated by hammering on the solid karst through which the tunnelers were digging.^[7]

We began this third day in Jerusalem by going to the Holocaust Museum.  It was incredibly sad, but a testament to courage and resilience.  Then we walked into the walled city through the  Dung Gate for lunch...

...past the Temple Mount area.

After that we headed outside the walls down into David's City...

...and down into Hezekiah's tunnel.  Shannon took a couple of these photos.   They told us  to keep our shoes on.

This is the pool of Siloam, where the tunnel ends.  A bit anti-climactic.

This is the way the tunnel looked.  You had to buy little flashlights to take with you and you can see why.  John made  me and Shannon reserve ours for later - we didn't know how long this wet walk would take.  He took the lead and the water initially was about 3 feet deep.  Goodbye to dry pants.  Then it evened out to about a foot deep the rest of the way.    Sometimes we had to bend over to get through for a bit, and turn sideways to squeeze through a narrower part.  John kept the pace up, surely not from fear, just athleticism.  I sang - very nice acoustics, I thought. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" was the song I chose.  But that did not ease the fear slow the pace for our leader.  Then suddenly we were back out in the sunshine, and the walk that was listed as taking 45 minutes took us less than 20.