One of the key problems in developing cities in Judah and Israel during the Iron Age was to ensure a continuous water supply in both peacetime and in time of war. In the City of David (Ancient Jerusalem) the only perennial source of water was the Gihon spring in a cave located in the Kidron Valley (Fig. 11.1a), which was beyond the fortified city (Cahill and Tarler, 1994). This spring does not maintain a constant flow, but has intermittent flows (varying with season of the year) through cracks in the cave floor. In antiquity three subterranean water supply systems were developed to obtain the water and store, distribute, and protect the water (Cahill and Tarler, 1994). The strategic water supply systems were Warren’s shaft, the Siloam channel, and Hezekiah’s tunnel, shown in Fig. 11.1.
Warren’s shaft (see Fig. 11.1b), named after the discoverer Ch. Warren, was the earliest of the three strategic water supply systems (10th or 9th centuries B. C.) (Shiloh, 1994). This system allowed residents of the city to obtain water from the
Fig. 11.1 (a) Hezekiah’s tunnel and other water systems in Jerusalem in the City of David (Cahill and Tarler, 1994). (b) City of David: Plan and section of tunnels in Warren’s Shaft: 1. Access tunnel; 2. Vaulted chamber; 3. Stepped tunnel; 4. Horizontal tunnel; 5. Vertical shaft; 6.tunnel linking up to spring; 7. Gihon Spring; side cave; trial shaft; 10. Hezekiah’s tunnel (Shiloh, 1994)
Gihon Spring without having to leave the fortified city. The systems consisted of an entrance area, a tunnel, a vertical shaft, and a feeder tunnel from the Gihon to the bottom of the shaft.
The Siloam channel was either contemporary with or slightly later in date than Warren’s shaft (Cahill and Tarler, 1994; Shiloh, 1994). This channel consisted of both a tunnel and a stone-capped channel that conveyed water from the Gihon Spring along the eastern slope of the City of David to a reservoir in the Tyropoeon Valley.
The channel also released water through openings in its eastern wall to agricultural plots and collected runoff from the slope through openings in the caps.
One biblical account (Chronicles 32:3) discusses King Hezekiah’s tunnel, the latest of the ancient water supply systems. During the First Temple, Jerusalem was under military threat from Assyria (2 Kings 20:20; Isaiah 22:11; 2 Chronicles 322-4, 30) causing an urban water crisis (Bruins, 2002). Hezekiah’s tunnel was built toward the end of the 8th century B. C. (Shiloh, 1994). The main water supply of ancient Jerusalem was the Gihon Spring, located inside a cave in the Kidron Valley (see Fig. 11.1). Water flowed from the spring intermittingly for about 40 minutes every six to eight hours (Bruins, 2002). Because a siege (during the late eighth century B. C.) could cut off the main water supply, which was just outside the city walls, King Hezekiah had a 533 m tunnel (Isar, 1990) dug in the limestone to channel the water underground into the city with the outlet being the Pool of Siloam (see Fig. 11.1). The tunnel was dug from both ends. Ancient Hebrew inscription was engraved in the rock wall near the outlet of the aqueduct tunnel (Bruins, 2002) describing how the dug tunnels met.
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods aqueducts were built to replace the Gihon Spring as ancient Jerusalem’s primary source of water supply. The aqueducts brought water from springs in the Judean Hills. Hezekiah’s tunnel and the Pool of Siloam continued to function during these periods (Cahill and Tarler, 1994).
Sennacherib built a series of aqueducts to provide water from the Gomel River. To quell the Assyrians (695 B. C.) he razed Babylon and diverted one of the irrigation canals to wash away the ruins. Sargon II (Assyrian) destroyed Armenian irrigation system and flooded their land (720-705 B. C.). Gleick (1990) provides other accounts in the Chronology.
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