Siloam Inscription

Sayce1892 historical source page 88

8o THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION. It is quite otherwise now. An inscription of some length has been discovered in Jerusalem itself, which is certainly as old as the time of Isaiah, and may be older still. In the summer of 1880, one of the native pupils of Mr. Schick, a German architect long settled in Jerusalem, was playing with some other lads in the so-called Pool of Siloam, and while wading up a channel cut in the rock which leads into the Pool slipped and fell into the water. On rising to the surface, he noticed what looked like letters on the rock which formed the southern wall of the channel. He told Mr. Schick of what he had seen ; and the latter, on visiting the spot, found that an ancient inscription, concealed for the most part by the water, actually existed there. The Pool is of comparatively modern construction, but it encloses the remains of a much older reservoir, which, like the modern one, was supplied with water through a tunnel excavated in the rock. This tunnel communi- cates with the so-called Spring of the Virgin, the only natural spring of water in or near Jerusalem. It rises below the walls of the city, on the western bank of the valley of the Kidron ; and the tunnel through which its waters are conveyed is consequently cut through the ridge that forms the southern part of the Temple Hill. The Pool of Siloam lies on the opposite side of this ridge, at the mouth of the valley called that of the Cheesemakers (Tyropoeon) in the time of Josephus, but which is now filled up with rubbish, and in large part built over. According to Captain Conder's measurements, the length of the tunnel is 1,708 yards ; it does not, however, run in a straight line, and towards the centre there are two ciils de sac, of which the inscription now offers an explanation. At the entrance on the western