Abstract
The Siloam Tunnel, an important engineering achievement of the Iron Age II, led the water of the Gihon Spring inside the city perimeter of ancient Jerusalem, ensuring water supply in peacetime as well as during war. This enterprise was planned after an earlier aqueduct failed to adequately supply Jerusalem's water needs because of hydrological limitations; also it was insufficiently defensible. We hypothesize that the tunnel was hewn at a level close to that of the local groundwater, along a natural winding route of interconnected karstic cavities developed in fissures and in dipping bedding planes. Because of the time needed to complete the project (we estimate at least four years), it could not have been undertaken as a countermeasure to the Assyrian king Sennacherib's siege in the year 701 B.C.E., nor could it have been completed before King Hezekiah's death in 698 B.C.E. We therefore suggest that it was carried out by Manasseh, King of Judah, at the beginning of the seventh century B.C.E.
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