HEZEKIAH'S TUNNEL

Discovered in 1880  on the wall insidie Hezekiah's Tunnel the Siloam Inscript describes the final moments in the tunnel's excavation, when the two teams of tunnelers were near enough to each other to hear the picks of the opposite team through the rock. Both teams repeatedly changed directions toward the sound of the other and finally broke through "water (then) flowed from the spring to the pool," the Siloam Inscription tells us.  The small changes in direction as the two teams of tunnelers sought to find each other at the meeting point can be seen below where the tunnel bends back and forth several times over the course of only a few feet.  What has remained a  mystery is how the tunnelers actually managed to reach that point.  Expanding on the ideas of earlier explorer, , suggested by a geologist over a decade ago that the tunneler. Tunnel:  rs were simply following and enlarging a natural underground stream, or karst.   Why,when the two teams of tunnelers were so near, did they have to struggle to find the other, on the Siloam Inscription and the changes to direction near the meeting point tell us? And why, if they were following an underground stream, did they dig several false tunnels  in the wrong direction

 Narrowly Winding its way through more than 1700 feet of Jerusalem limestone, the 3th century B.C.E.tunnel of King Hezekiah is one of the great engineering feats of ancient times.  The entire length of the tunnel was chiseled out by two teams digging toward each other from opposite ends of the
City of David.  Once completed, the channel carried precious water from the Gihon spring just outside Jerusalem's city walls to the more protected confines of the Siloam Pool  (See Plan).  But working in near-total darkness with nothing more than small oil lamps and without the aid of intermediate surface shafts, how did the workers manage to find each other?  And why did they follows such a circuitous route?

Planning for the worst in 701 B.C.E. the armies of the Assyrian monarch Sennarcherib descended upon the cities and villages of the kingdom of Judah.  Although Sennacherib boasted in this famous cuneiform inscription, known as the Sennacherib Prism that he trapped Hezekiah in Jerusalem  "like a bird in a cage," he ultimately failed to conquer Hezekiah's capital city.  the failure of his siege of the city likely resulted from the defense measures  Hezekiahs's defenses and building a tunnel that would secure the city's only source of water.